HigherIQ

HigherIQ
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A daily briefing for people who are curious about the world but tired of doom. Each episode is carefully crafted with one goal: give you something worth sharing at dinner tonight. Economics, science, business, culture. Ten minutes every morning. Born from a New Year's resolution that stuck.

  1. 8h ago

    The Deadliest Wildfire in American History

    00:00 — Introduction 00:10 — The Night the Midwest Burned 00:10 — Why Chicago Won the Headlines 01:27 — The Peshtigo Paradigm 01:44 — Wrap Up Sources: - How the 1871 Peshtigo Fire Became America's Deadliest Wildfire: https://www.history.com/news/peshtigo-fire-america-deadliest-wildfire - Massive Peshtigo Fire Burns in Wisconsin: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/october-8/massive-fire-burns-in-wisconsin - Peshtigo Fire (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_fire - The Peshtigo Fire Weather Setup: https://www.weather.gov/grb/peshtigofire - The Night Wisconsin Burned: The Peshtigo Fire of 1871: https://www.fox6now.com/weather/night-wisconsin-burned-forgotten-firestorm-peshtigo - Great Chicago Fire (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire - Today in History: October 8 (Library of Congress): https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/october-08 Full interactive experience at thehigheriq.com — skip between stories, test your recall, and get personalized briefings.

  2. 1d ago

    How Baseball Became a Game of Numbers

    00:00 — Introduction 00:39 — Why Baseball and Nothing Else 01:27 — The Night Watchman 02:30 — The Team That Listened 03:33 — The Backlash 04:44 — Wrap Up Sources: - Bill James — Society for American Baseball Research (SABR): https://sabr.org/authors/bill-james - The Man Behind the 'Moneyball' Sabermetrics — NPR: https://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140813409/the-man-behind-the-moneyball-sabermetrics - 2002 Oakland Athletics season — Baseball Reference: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/OAK/2002.shtml - Average MLB game time dropped to 2:40 with pitch clock — ESPN: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/38551264/mlb-game-dropped-240-pitch-clock - MLB game time drops 24 minutes in first year with pitch clock — NBC New York: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/mlb/mlb-game-time-drops-24-minutes-in-first-year-with-pitch-clock/4734697 - New MLB rules in 2023 shorten games, increase steals — MLB.com: https://www.mlb.com/news/effect-of-new-rules-early-2023 Full interactive experience at thehigheriq.com — skip between stories, test your recall, and get personalized briefings.

  3. 2d ago

    A Nobel Prize for Controlling the Brain With Light

    00:00 — Introduction 00:41 — A Switch From Pond Scum 02:10 — What You Can Do When You Have a Remote Control for Neurons 03:51 — The First Human Applications 04:50 — Wrap Up Sources: - The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 — Press Release: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2026/press-release - Boyden to share prestigious brain prize — MIT News (optogenetics history): https://news.mit.edu/2013/mits-boyden-to-share-prestigious-brain-prize - Channelrhodopsin-1: A Light-Gated Proton Channel in Green Algae — Nagel et al., Science, 2002: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1072068 - QnAs with Karl Deisseroth — PNAS, 2016: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1603394113 - Optogenetics: Controlling the Brain with Light — Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/optogenetics-controlling - Restoring vision using optogenetics without being blind to the risks — PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8558540 - Nobel medicine prize goes to 3 scientists for research into brain activity — Boston.com: https://www.boston.com/news/health/2026/10/05/nobel-medicine-prize-research-brain-activity/ Full interactive experience at thehigheriq.com — skip between stories, test your recall, and get personalized briefings.

  4. 3d ago

    Vitamin C Doesn't Do What You Think It Does

    00:00 — Introduction 00:38 — The Greatest Chemist Who Ever Lived 02:16 — Sixty-Three Trials Later 03:50 — Why Nobody Hears the Nuance 04:46 — Wrap Up Sources: - Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold — Cochrane Review (Hemilä, Chalker, 2013): https://www.cochrane.org/evidence/CD000980_vitamin-c-preventing-and-treating-common-cold - Vitamin C reduces the severity of common colds: a meta-analysis (Hemilä, Chalker, BMC Public Health, 2023): https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-023-17229-8 - Vitamin C supplementation and the common cold — was Linus Pauling right or wrong? (Hemilä, 1997): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9350474 - Linus Pauling's Vitamin C Crusade — Science History Institute: https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/linus-paulings-vitamin-c-crusade - Vitamin C in the Prevention and Treatment of the Common Cold — PMC review: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6124957 Full interactive experience at thehigheriq.com — skip between stories, test your recall, and get personalized briefings.

  5. 3d ago

    The Origin Story of Money That Everyone Learned Is Wrong

    00:00 — Introduction 00:39 — The Standard Story 03:00 — Money as a Shared Ledger 04:45 — Wrap Up Sources: - David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House, 2011): https://davidgraeber.org/books/debt-the-first-5000-years - Caroline Humphrey, 'Barter and Economic Disintegration,' Man, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Mar., 1985): https://www.jstor.org/stable/2802222 - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter IV: Of the Origin and Use of Money: https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/chapter-iv-of-the-origin-and-use-money - Denise Schmandt-Besserat, From Accounting to Writing (University of Texas): https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/wp-content/uploads/sites/3043/2015/04/FromAccountingtoWriting.pdf - NPR Planet Money: The Island of Stone Money: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money - Business Insider: Pubs replaced banks in Ireland in 1970, and the economy was fine: https://www.businessinsider.com/pubs-replaced-banks-in-ireland-in-1970-and-the-economy-was-fine-2016-1 - The Irish Times: Of course I remember the bank strikes, my mother says: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/01/13/rachel-odwyer-of-course-i-remember-the-irish-bank-strikes-my-mother-says-your-dad-took-to-carrying-a-gun Full interactive experience at thehigheriq.com — skip between stories, test your recall, and get personalized briefings.

  6. 5d ago

    How the Auto Industry Invented the Crime of Crossing the Street

    00:00 — Introduction 01:00 — When Streets Belonged to People 02:18 — The Campaign 03:59 — Wrap Up Sources: - The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of 'jaywalking' (Vox): https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history - Why Jaywalking is Called Jaywalking (Merriam-Webster): https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/why-is-it-called-jaywalking - Kansas City invented 'jaywalking,' leading the war against pedestrians (KCUR/NPR): https://www.kcur.org/history/2026-01-29/kansas-city-jaywalking-crime-pedestrians-cars-right-of-way - Free to jaywalk: How Kansas City killed the discriminatory law it helped to invent (KCUR/NPR): https://www.kcur.org/history/2026-02-17/kansas-city-jaywalking-ban-repeal-pedestrian-cars - Jaywalking Is a New York Tradition. Now It's Legal, Too. (New York Times): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/nyregion/jaywalking-legal-law-nyc.html - California Legislature Votes to End Sending People to Jail for Non-Jailable Infractions, Bill Heads to Governor (Western Center on Law & Poverty): https://wclp.org/california-legislature-votes-to-end-practice-of-sending-people-to-jail-for-non-jailable-infractions-bill-heads-to-governor-newsoms-desk Full interactive experience at thehigheriq.com — skip between stories, test your recall, and get personalized briefings.

  7. 6d ago

    The Invention of Living Alone

    00:00 — Introduction 01:11 — Before Anyone Lived Alone 01:51 — How We Separated 02:41 — What It Does to Us 03:33 — The Return of the Housemate 04:23 — Wrap Up Sources: - The Historic Rise of One-Person Households: 1850-2010 (US Census Bureau): https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/2014/demo/kreider-01.html - Historic Rise of Living Alone and Fall of Boarders in the United States: 1850-2010 (US Census Bureau): https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2015/demo/SEHSD-WP2015-11.pdf - Solo living has become the most common arrangement for households in the United States (Our World in Data): https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solo-living-has-become-the-most-common-arrangement-for-households-in-the-united-states - Loneliness, social isolation, and living alone: a comprehensive systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression of mortality risks in older adults (PubMed, 2025): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39836319 - Assessment of the relationship between living alone and the risk of depression based on longitudinal studies: A systematic review and meta-analysis (Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2022): https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.954857/full - Typologies of loneliness, living alone and social isolation, and their associations with physical and mental health (Ageing & Society, Cambridge, 2019): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ageing-and-society/article/typologies-of-loneliness-living-alone-and-social-isolation-and-their-associations-with-physical-and-mental-health/D353C1E49A62C970DDA90C313B52B6E3 - Why Adults Are Choosing Co-Living to Beat High Rent and Loneliness in 2026 (Sacramento Bee): https://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/article316161962.html - Are Intentional Communities the Way Forward? (Teen Vogue, 2025): https://www.teenvogue.com/story/intentional-communities Full interactive experience at thehigheriq.com — skip between stories, test your recall, and get personalized briefings.

  8. Oct 1

    End Quarterly Earnings Reports? Here's the Debate — Bloomberg | SEC Proposes Amendments to Permit Optional Semiannual Reporting — SEC Press Release | Petition for Rulemaking to Amend Quarterly Reporting Requirements — LTSE (Sept 30, 2025)

    00:00 — Introduction 00:44 — Where Quarterly Reporting Comes From 01:32 — What the UK and Europe Did 02:31 — The Evidence That Finally Moved the SEC 04:28 — Wrap Up Sources: - End Quarterly Earnings Reports? Here's the Debate — Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-05/end-quarterly-earnings-reports-here-s-the-debate - SEC Proposes Amendments to Permit Optional Semiannual Reporting — SEC Press Release: https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026-42-sec-proposes-amendments-permit-optional-semiannual-reporting-public-companies - Petition for Rulemaking to Amend Quarterly Reporting Requirements — LTSE (Sept 30, 2025): https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/petitions/2025/petn4-872.pdf - Should U.S. Companies Adopt Semi-Annual Reporting? — SEC Comment File: https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-26-18/s72618-4826123-177031.pdf - Quarterly or Biannual Reporting? Weighing the Trade-Offs — Gallagher / AJG: https://www.ajg.com/news-and-insights/biannual-or-quarterly-reporting-weighing-trade-offs/ - Measuring the Economic Impact of Short-Termism — McKinsey Global Institute: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/long-term-capitalism/where-companies-with-a-long-term-view-outperform-their-peers - Impact of Reporting Frequency on UK Public Companies — Robert Pozen, Harvard Kennedy School: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/growthpolicy/impact-reporting-frequency-uk-public-companies - Focusing Capital on the Long Term — McKinsey / HBR: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/focusing-capital-on-the-long-term - Removing the Transparency Directive's Requirement to Publish Interim Management Statements — UK FCA: https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/policy/ps14-15.pdf Full interactive experience at thehigheriq.com — skip between stories, test your recall, and get personalized briefings.

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About

A daily briefing for people who are curious about the world but tired of doom. Each episode is carefully crafted with one goal: give you something worth sharing at dinner tonight. Economics, science, business, culture. Ten minutes every morning. Born from a New Year's resolution that stuck.

Information

  • Creator
    HigherIQ
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    270
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    HigherIQ

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