Ezra Klein

This week’s New York magazine has a long and richly written tour through the emergent positive psychology — or “happiness” — literature. I’m particularly interested in the subject because I toyed with doing an article on the political ramifications of this research, but picking through the data failed to unveil the sort of ideologically applicable […]

I have a piece in Slate today about medical malpractice and the total inadequacy of tort reform. Check it out.

Robert Bruegmann thinks folks in LA should stop getting so worked up about the traffic: Even when speeds on the freeway decline to 20 mph, drivers throughout the Los Angeles area move more quickly than they do by car or public transportation at the center of almost any large, older city in Europe or the […]

By Brian Beutler I’ve been fascinated by this headbutting business too, and so I’ve been looking at all that YouTube has to offer. What I found was this three second slow-motion clip. Maybe you guys see it differently than I do, but after watching (and then rewatching and rewatching and…) this clip, I’ve gotta say, […]

Just watch this for a few minutes. I guarantee you’ve never seen anything quite like it. And make sure you wait till at least the fourth phrase.

Andrei Cherny and Ken Baer’s latest op-ed on the power of ideas makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Which isn’t a new idea, but an old one that should probably be implemented more often. Responding to the handful of pundits who finally tired of the new ideas meme and pointed out […]

Don’t go to law school, I guess: Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than members of other professions, and it’s not just because their jobs are more stressful. For most people, job stress has little effect on happiness unless it is accompanied by a lack of control (lawyers, of course, have clients […]

Pankaj Mishra has written a helpful op-ed puncturing many of the myths about the extent and sustainability of India’s recent economic performance: But the increasingly common, business-centric view of India suppresses more facts than it reveals. Recent accounts of the alleged rise of India barely mention the fact that the country’s $728 per capita gross […]

Word is that Materazzi called Zidane’s father as “harki,” “the Arabic term for Algerians who fought for France against Algeria during the occupation. It’s beyond all insults, the ultimate traitor.” Hence the headbutt. Zidane, remember, is of Algerian ancestry, though he grew up in France. The explanation, however, does little to lift the weirdness of […]

When Jon Chait wondered whether he could fully appreciate “the full subtlety of [Jon] Podhoretz’s rapier wit, with all its complexities and layers of symbolism,” I’ve no doubt he was thinking of finely crafted, deeply meaningful gems such as these: More World Cup Observations [John Podhoretz] This is astounding: A French player assaulting an Italian […]