In the 1970s, psychologist Diana Deutsch was experimenting with a synthesizer, when she heard something strange. “It seemed to me that I’d entered another universe or I’d gone crazy or something…the world had just turned upside down!” Deutsch recalls. Deutsch had stumbled across an illusion in audio form — she called it the “Octave Illusion” […]

The thing about dental insurance is that it isn’t really insurance — it’s more like a half-helpful discount plan with a maximum. And once you reach the maximum, you’re on your own, often to the tune of hundreds and thousands of dollars. As though going to the dentist needed to be less fun. In the […]

As the New York City mayoral election enters the final stretch, with the Muslim American Democratic Party nominee Zohran Mamdani maintaining a sizable lead in all of the polls, a familiar beast has reared its head: blatant Islamophobia. Most of those dabbling in outright bigotry are unsurprising: right-wing shock-jocks and the pro-Trump New York Post. […]

Every product sells itself with a story. The story Ford tells us is that its cars are America. Ford has described itself as the most American automaker. They make their cars in America, and have since Henry Ford developed the automobile assembly line and used it to build the Model T in 1913. So American […]

AI is improving at what feels like a breakneck pace. Once, it struggled with basic syntax; now, it can ace some college-level coursework. The better it gets, the more reason there is to worry about what it could soon mean for all of our jobs — and whether continued progress could doom many to a […]