Sequencing departures like a moving puzzle, scrambling when a jet takes off without clearance, and catching what radar misses with a glance out the window with Michael Rejent, an air traffic controller.
Hugging a mother through an anxiety attack, bidding for the best routes, and absorbing strangers’ confessions at 35,000 feet with Linda Beall, a flight attendant.
Shooting cat-three landings in the fog, using the “voice of God” on unruly passengers, and declaring Mayday after an engine fire with Paul Drusch, a commercial airline pilot.
Untangling who gets to speak for a dying patient, weighing a treatment’s benefits against its burdens, and searching for clarity in the grayest corners of healthcare with Esther Berkowitz, a clinical ethicist.
Grinding through 16-hour shifts, standing behind inmates (never in front), and trying to stay human in an inhuman environment with Bill Farrell, a correctional officer in Massachusetts.
Harvesting five million bushels of wheat and corn from Texas to Montana, outrunning hailstorms that decimate a year’s income in 20 minutes, and running a multimillion-dollar convoy of equipment down the highway with Josh Beckley, a third-generation custom harvester from Kansas.
Guiding grieving families through arrangement meetings, orchestrating meaningful memorial services within days, and preparing bodies for viewing with Heather Hill, a funeral director in North Carolina.
For your intellectual travels this summer, a baker’s dozen of behavioral science books newly published this year.
Why was Babe Ruth so good at hitting a baseball? In 1921, a journalist and two psychologists brought the “home run king” into the lab to find out.
The W.E.I.R.D research participant problem persists not because scientists fail to see it as a problem worth solving, but because conducting studies in new, unfamiliar places is difficult. But overcoming this difficulty is doable and essential.
