We expend effort. We create value. It’s easy to get confused about which one we’re going to ultimately be compensated for.

The idea of discovering a lost ancient city underground has long captured the human imagination. But why are the abandoned built environments of those fantasies always buried? The answer, in large part, is that such places do indeed exist under our feet, at least in certain parts of the world. When archaeologists started digging under […]

Wild animals forage. They spend calories and take risks to acquire food. If the required work and risk expended are more than the food they acquire, they go extinct. The goal is to get as many calories as possible for as little effort as possible. If there’s a surplus, their instinct is to have kids […]

In the new Architectural Digest video above, Michael Wyetzner talks about a fair few buildings we’ve featured over the years here on Open Culture: the Imperial Hotel, the Ennis House, Taliesin, Fallingwater. These are all, of course, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who still stands as the embodiment of American architecture more than 65 […]

Little kids get confused about this… just add a few more to a very big number, and you have infinity. Actually, infinity is a feeling and a concept built on the presumption that it can never be reached. In a metrics-driven world, infinity is a dangerous thing to wish for, because it can never be […]