The lottery is one of the few games where everyone knows the odds are terrible—and millions of people play anyway. Why? It turns out there are some fascinating psychological reasons people buy lottery tickets, along with a few surprising facts about the odds and strategies that most players never consider. https://www.wired.com/video/watch/lottery-strategy
When Uber launched, many people thought the idea was ridiculous. Let strangers drive you around in their personal cars? Airbnb faced similar skepticism. Why would anyone stay in a stranger's house? Yet these companies went on to reshape entire industries. The same is true of Twitter, Twitch, and many other breakthrough businesses. What separates ideas that change the world from ideas that never get off the ground? According to venture capitalist Mike Maples Jr., truly transformative companies don't succeed by being slightly better than the competition—they succeed by seeing the world differently. In this conversation, Mike explains the patterns behind history's most disruptive startups, why the best ideas often sound wrong at first, and what it takes to build something that changes the future. Mike is co-founder of Floodgate, one of Silicon Valley's premier seed-stage investment firms, host of the podcast Starting Greatness (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/starting-greatness/id1488560647), and author of Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future (https://amzn.to/3W8BXlT).
Black holes may be the most mysterious objects in the universe. Their gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape. Yet despite their reputation as cosmic vacuum cleaners, black holes do much more than simply swallow things. In fact, astronomers now believe that the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy may have played a critical role in making life on Earth possible. How can something so destructive also be so important? Why does nearly every galaxy appear to have a supermassive black hole at its center? And what have scientists learned recently that is forcing them to rethink these extraordinary objects? Marcus Chown, former radio astronomer at Caltech and author of A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage (https://amzn.to/3W9cFUE), takes us on a fascinating tour of one of the strangest and most important discoveries in modern science.
Most people rely on sunscreen as their primary defense against skin cancer—and for good reason. Yet skin cancer rates continue to rise. Researchers are increasingly discovering that sun protection may involve more than what you put on your skin. Emerging evidence suggests that what you put on your plate could also influence how your skin responds to the sun. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/well/eat/diet-skin-cancer-risk-melanoma.html
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