Six Ways People Find Meaning in Work

American essayist, historian, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote: "It is not enough to be industrious. So are the ants." The British ...

Blacksmith's Ancient Swords Illustrate Excellence

In his book Deep Work, author Cal Newport provides an example of excellence—a blacksmith from Wisconsin named Ric Furrer. Furrer specializes in ...

A Pearl of (Very) Great Price

A tourism officer in the Philippines unveiled a family treasure: a 75-pound pearl. The officer, Aileen Cynthia Maggay-Amurao, received the pearl from ...

The Actor Who Played Over 3,000 Roles

Milton Lichtman (also known as Jan Leighton) died at the age of eighty-seven. For over 30 years Lichtman's primary claim to fame was appearing in ...

J.J. Abrams on His Grandfather

In an interview with Esquire magazine, film producer and director J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Lost) shared that his biggest influence as ...

Two Kids Dream of Flight

Any given day, 23,000 scheduled flights take off and land at American airports. At any given time, 5,000 of those airplanes are simultaneously airborne. ...

What Actors Have Done to Prepare for a Role

For her role in Black Swan, Natalie Portman trained with New York City Ballet dancer Mary Helen Bowers for eight hours a day, six days a week for the ...

Einstein's Dream Led to His Brilliance

In 1905 Albert Einstein stunned the world with his revolutionary equation, E = mc2. Einstein wrote hundreds of papers over the course of his career. But ...

People Wouldn't Fight Crime with Superpowers

Which superpower would you choose—flight or invisibility? You can't have both, and you'll be the only person in the world to have that particular ...

Mozart Worked Hard to Be Creative

In 1815, Germany's General Music Journal published a letter in which allegedly Mozart described his creative process:

When I am, as it were, completely ...