Stuff I Find Interesting

I spend much of my free time reading. This is a listing of things I’ve found fascinating, whether from articles, blogs, or podcasts, added to the top as I find them.

SOCIETY ! the Southern accent is dying. Annie Joy Williams, 1/4/2026.
HEALTH | large animals have lots of cells and live longer, both factors that support development of cancerous cells. But, that doesn’t happen to the large, long-lived bowhead whale. Ari Daniel, 11/24/2025.
HEALTH | an implant treatment eliminated tumors in 82% of bladder cancer patients. 11/11/2025, Science Daily.
AUTOMOTIVE | bricked? EVs may end up aging like smartphones. 10/21/20205, Andrew Moseman.
MARKETS | “I cannot recall ever hearing the crowd identity a bubble in real time, and then there actually a) being a bubble that b) burst soon after.” A helpful bubble checklist. 10/16/2025, Barry Ritholtz.
ECONOMICS | job growth is slow because of a slowdown in immigration, AI implementation, and a return from artificially high government job growth. 10/8/2025, Torsten Sløk.
MARKETS | without the Pacific Coast, US stock performance is still far better than the rest of the world, but not as phenomenal. 10/2/2025, John Rekenthaler.
TECH | it will be a long while before humanoid robots can be designed to match the 17,000 touch receptors in the human hand. 9/26/2025, Connie Loizos.
AI | when it comes to radiology, AI models can detect with greater accuracy than a panel of radiologists. Yet, demand for radiologists is at all-time highs. 9/25/2025, Deena Mousa.
MARKETS | the AI boom is not the Dot-Com bubble, at least yet. 9/25/2025, Alan Gula.
HEALTH | facelifts are getting really good. 9/4/2025, Bridget Read.
CLIMATE | 15-20 years ago, the prospects of climate change were scary. Today? Meh. We thought warming by the end of this century would be 5 degrees, now worst case scenario is considered to be 3 degrees.
SOCIETY | there was backlash to the Walkman in the 1980s. 8/13/2025, Louis Anslow.
COOKING | the best way to prepare bacon is oven-baked. 7/26/2025, Adam Dolge.
NUTRITION | eating eggs doesn’t raise your cholesterol. 7/25/2025, Bronwyn Thompson.
HOUSING | Michigan has the 4th-most vacation homes in the US. 7/24/2025, Brian Potter.
EDUCATION | you’re more likely to pass an exam if you take it between 11am and 1pm. 7/24/2025, Vicarioe et al.
AI | why might AI not actually cause mass unemployment? read about the Jevons paradox. 6/28/2025, Adam M. Grossman.
ECONOMICS | US productivity has surged post-pandemic, but it’s not totally certain why. 7/3/2025, Timothy Taylor.
ECONOMICS | the US is expected to see the second-largest influx of millionaires in the world. 6/27/2025, Millie Giles & Tom Jones.
SOCIETY | America’s prison population peaked at 1.6 million in 2009, fell to 1.2 million in 2023, and is set to fall to just 600,000. 6/25/2025, Keith Humphreys.
MYSTERY | the mystery of Roanoke Island may have finally been solved after 440 years. 6/7/2025, Andrea Margolis.
HEALTH | a new topical gel might replace oral antibiotics for ear infections. 6/6/2025, Ben Coxworth.
SAFETY | bring a carbon monoxide detector with you when you travel. 6/2/2025, Sumathi Reddy.
HEALTH | if early humans needed silence and pure darkness to sleep, they probably would have never slept… and some other common sleep myths. 4/21/2025, Michael Easter.
ECONOMICS | Poland is expected to have a higher GDP per capita than Japan next year. 3/30/2025, Torsten Sløk.
FRAUD | currencies with uniformly-sized bills across denominations are less likely to allow counterfeit bills to flow (because people have to look at them to at least determine their value). 3/3/2025, David Eagleman.
AI | hmm… interjections may be the hardest part of language for AI to master. 2/24/2025, Bob Holmes.
MARKETS | since the election, Republicans’ expectations of inflation level has tanked while Democrats’ has shot up. 2/10/2025, Menzie Chinn.
SOCIETY | don’t blame college for marriage decline: educated women are getting married at the same rates as the 1950s. 2/1/2025, Emily Peck.
DRUGS | legalized marijuana has been a disappointment. 1/31/2025, Jonathan Caulkins & Keith Humphreys.
MARKETS | US banks should do well under Trump. 1/30/2025, Felix Salmon.
MARKETS | basically no countries are expected to be in recession this year. 1/14/2025, Torsten Sløk.
COMPANIES | Trader Joes is apparently the grocery store version of fast fashion. 1/7/2025, Clint Rainey.
MARKETS | of these 12 risks to the market in 2025, the risk of a US recession is 0% (while a German one is 40%). 12/23/2024, Torsten Sløk.
POLICY | the properties of property tax assessors in the US tend to be “significantly lower than neighboring properties”… 12/10/2024, Huaizhi Chen and Lauren Cohen.
POLITICS | There are actually fewer “purple” counties in 2024 than in the past. Counties have mostly gotten more polarized in one direction or the other. 12/4/2024, Robert J. Vanderbei.
HEALTH | traditional Chinese medicine was ditched hundreds of years ago in China but revived under communism to makeup for a shortage of doctors. Now there are acupuncturists all over America. 11/30/2024, Michael Regilio.
POLICY | look to Norway for what happens when you tax unrealized gains. 11/28/2024, hagaetc.eth.
SOCIETY | there are many reasons why the world is better with more people. It allows for more specialization which leads to more innovation, economies of scale (more buyers means costs are spread over more units), and investments based on growing population. In a shrinking world, we’ll fight over the shrinking pie. 11/26/2024, Tomas Pueyo.
HEALTH | anti-perspirant is most effective when applied before bed and research has been telling us this for years. 11/19/2024, Yasmin Tayag.
SOCIETY | our planet can hold at least 10 times more people than we currently have. And that’s allowing for retaining lots of natural areas. 11/19/2024, Tomas Pueyo.
FLORA & FAUNA | two comb jellies merged together, becoming one. 11/13/2024, Eric Niiler.
FOOD & DRINK | which glass shape keeps beer the coldest? The classic pilsner glass. 11/8/2024, Bronwyn Thompson.
WEALTH | you should definitely be drinking alcohol, especially in your 20s. The benefits of socialization will help you more than anything in your career. And following your dreams in order to be successful? Probably not going to happen. 11/5/2024, Scott Galloway.
MARKETS | among the top 10 “useless macroeconomic theories“, we find Modern Monetary Theory which is debunked with the inflation of the past couple years. The Inverted Yield Curve is often spoken of and has apparently become useless since a credit crunch did not result from the collapse of some regional banks last year. The Disinverting Yield Curve is not working now because the Fed is cutting rates to prevent crisis, rather than stopping one that has already started. 11/1/2024, Ed Yardeni & Eric Wallerstein.
FINANCE | the CAPM celebrated its 60th birthday. 10/15/2024, Stephen R. Foerster.
HEALTH | your blood pressure may be lower than you think. 10/8/2024, Will Stone.
POLITICS | there’s a big disparity in voter turnout among the 50 states+DC. 10/10/2024, Torsten Sløk.
MARKETS | we’re in the middle of “an epic bull market“. The S&P 500 is up ~17% per year since the Great Recession. This is below the bull markets of the 1980s and 1990s, but perhaps an AI boom will really put us in the Roaring ’20s. 9/27/2024, Ben Carlson.
LAW | “Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops“. This is hopefully obvious to most but with more states allowing for digital IDs, it may become less obvious. The SCOTUS has ruled that police must have warrants to search phones. Handing them over your phone, however, changes the facts. 9/24/2024, Gaby Del Valle.
HEALTH | Xolair is an asthma drug, but it has had significant success in alleviating food allergies for people. And yet, few know about it. 9/9/2024, Sarah Zhang.
HEALTH | optimistic people are associated with living longer. 8/26/2019.