Jeremy Mercer

The most recent episode of RadioLab, the science show produced by WNYC in New York, investigates the source of human goodness and it includes an astoundingly inspiring insight into heroism.

Most of the show investigates the quandary of altruism and whether it is actually a biologically selfish act that evolved to help protect shared genetic material in blood relatives. (I explored this same question in this essay about altruism in economics that appeared in the May 2009 issue of Ode.)   Read more...

The other day, a rather traumatic scene unfolded at my daughter’s day care. A group of three children, two toddlers and one baby, were playing with a set of wooden play tools. The toddlers were busily hammering fake nails when, suddenly, they turned and gleefully hammered the baby on the head.

“Tappé! Tappé!” they shrieked happily.   Read more...

One can’t help but feel the past decade has been Biblically awful for independent booksellers. There was the plague of big chain stores like Barnes & Noble who introduced heavy discounts on bestsellers that couldn’t be matched by smaller stores with lower sales volumes. Then, there was the scourge of online booksellers like Amazon that extended heavy discounting to all books and pulled even more customers away from independents. And, now, there is the curse of e-books that allow people to bypass not just brick-and-mortar stores but the ink-on-paper pages that those stores sell.

Confronted with these dire times, Meg Smith of the American Booksellers Association has three tips for independents: Diversify your stock so you can earn additional profits selling coffee, T-shirts, pens, and assorted whatnot. Hold events such as book club meetings and story-telling sessions for children so your store becomes the ultimate "third space" where people want to be when they’re not at work or home. And finally, innovate innovate innovate.   Read more...