Benjamin Franklin on the 4-hour day
From Benjamin Franklin, "On Luxury, Idleness, and Industry," in The Life of Benjamin Franklin (Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1852), p. 292: “It has been computed by some political
“Slow Down A Little Bit:” Brooklyn USA on the 4-day week
The Brooklyn USA podcast takes a deep dive into the 4-day week. Historian Benjamin Hunnicutt has called the push for more free time the “forgotten American dream"; but
“We see the time not too far distant when we can have a four-day week and family life will be even more fully enjoyed by every American:” Richard Nixon on the 4-day week Gallery“We see the time not too far distant when we can have a four-day week and family life will be even more fully enjoyed by every American:” Richard Nixon on the 4-day week
“We see the time not too far distant when we can have a four-day week and family life will be even more fully enjoyed by every American:” Richard Nixon on the 4-day week
Some time ago I posted about a speech that Richard Nixon gave in 1956 mentioning the 4-day week. This morning, the Nixon library sent me a PDF of
Richard Nixon talked about a 4-day week in 1956
[Update: More about the Nixon speech is here.] Recently in British magazine The Spectator, an article appeared explaining “Why Conservatives should support a four-day week.” I appreciated it
“the first step to the investigation of the creative mind is the historical approach”
From the opening page of Rosamund E. M. Harding's The Anatomy of Inspiration: We venture to suggest, therefore, that the first step to the investigation of the creative
Using science in history: the case of spontaneous thinking
Within the discipline of history, the effort to use theories from the human and natural sciences-- e.g., psychology, psychoanalysis, biology, and other fields-- to explain historical change is
Wealth, inequality, populism, and the end of the Roman Republic
This Lawfare podcast with Mike Duncan, author of The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Late Republic, is well worth a listen if
How good a model is Darwin (or Jefferson, or Hemingway)?
Every now and then a reader suggests that some of the people I talk about in REST aren’t good role models because they were either bad people, or
Children’s drawings on the Origin of Species manuscript
I've written about my admiration of Charles Darwin as a husband and father, and the way he defied stereotypes of both Romantic Genius (which holds that really talented
New article on the history of spontaneous thought
Later this year Oxford University Press is publishing The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought, edited by Kieran Fox and Kalina Christoff. I have a chapter on the history of