James' World 2

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Centuries before the birth of Leonardo Da Vinci, three brothers from Baghdad gathered their designs for more than 100 ahead-of-their-time inventions into a manuscript titled the Book of Ingenious Devices. Also known as the Kitáb al-Hiyal, it contains blueprints for rudimentary gas masks and mechanical digging machines — devices that would not become commonplace for another thousand years.

The brothers — Muhamad, Ahmad, and al-Hasan bin Musa ibn Shakir, who were called the Banu Musa or the “Sons of Moses,” after their father — grew up in the early 9th century AD. It was the dawn of the Islamic Golden Age, an age which they themselves helped bring about. Each brother specialized in a different area of study: Muhamad in astronomy, Ahmad in engineering, and al-Hasan in geometry.

Legend has it that the Banu Musa, left impoverished after their father passed away, were taken under the wing of Abu al-Abbas Abdallah ibn Harun al-Rashid, a caliph remembered for his interest in and support for the development of the arts and sciences. It was on his orders that the brothers set to work on their Book of Ingenious Devices, which they completed around 850 AD.

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The Devils River, in southwestern Texas, runs, mirage-like, along the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, through some of the most barren countryside in the United States. Access to the river is limited; unless you’re in a kayak, the only way to travel upstream is along a skein of rutted dirt roads. It was on one of these roads that, a few years ago, David Wagner noticed a shrub that seemed to him peculiarly filled with promise.

Wagner is an entomologist who teaches at the University of Connecticut. He has close-cropped silvery hair and a square jaw and bears a passing resemblance to George C. Scott playing General Buck Turgidson. The way other people might recall a marvelous restaurant or a heartbreaking vista, Wagner remembers a propitious plant. He has friends who own a house along the Devils River and each time he has visited them he has stopped by the exact same shrub to investigate. No luck. This past October, I was traveling with him when he tried yet again. He spread a white nylon sheet on the ground, then started whacking the bush with a pole to dislodge anything that might be clinging to it.

“Un-fucking-believable!” he exclaimed. I was whacking a plant nearby, just for the hell of it. Wagner held out his hand. A caterpillar about three-quarters of an inch long was wriggling across his palm. It looked brownish and totally ordinary until I examined it under a loupe, at which point it was revealed to be flamboyantly striped, with yellow and red splotches and two black, hornlike protuberances sticking out of its back. Based on a series of taxonomic calculations, Wagner was convinced that the caterpillar was the juvenile form of an exceptionally rare moth known as Ursia furtiva.

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Despite progress in other areas of American life, women are still facing discrimination in the workplace — and it’s showing up in their paychecks. 

Tuesday’s Equal Pay Day marks the continuing discrepancy between men and women’s salaries, a date the country has been recognizing since 1996. But in the 27 years since the effort began to bring attention to the pay gap, it has narrowed very little. 

In 2023, women are earning 77 cents for every dollar earned by White men, the racial group with the highest pay across occupations. That figure takes the average pay for all full- and part-time working women and compares it with the average pay for White men. The figure is calculated based on earnings in 2021, the most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau. 

In 1996, women were earning 75 cents to the White man’s $1. Then, the number was calculated using only the wages for full-time workers — today the gap comparing full-time earnings alone would be 84 cents for women compared with $1 for White men. 

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The word power tends to have a negative connotation, but it is often required to get things done in the workplace. Contrary to what you may think, power dosn’t come only from the title you have or where you are on an org chart. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes people make at work is giving up their power because they think they don’t have any. 

Fortunately, you can build your power even more with intentional action, and I want you to know how you can be even more powerful than you already are. As a leadership consultant, I often advise people to “Lead from where you are,” because you have the power to positively affect your colleagues and your organization in whatever role you’re in. 

Though there are many different types of power at work, three are especially important: position, relationship, and expert. Here’s how these kinds of power function, and how you can develop them yourself:

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What’s the secret to a fulfilling career? Most advice focuses on finding purpose and satisfaction in your work. If you can just land the perfect job doing meaningful work, you’ll finally be happy. But my research across a wide range of organizations and industries shows that our understanding of what leads to professional satisfaction is often misplaced. People tend to overestimate the importance of the what when they should be focusing on the who.

In interviews with a diverse group of 160 people from a variety of industries and positions, my colleagues and I found again and again that flourishing in your career depends as much on your relationships, both in and out of work, as it does on your job itself. People whose work is mundane or demanding are just as likely to feel satisfied and fulfilled as those with fun or inspiring jobs if they proactively invest in relationships that nourish them and create a sense of purpose.

The importance of relationships is backed up by research. Studies show that social connections play a central role in fostering a sense of purpose and well-being in the workplace. They also impact the bottom line: Effective management of social capital within organizations facilitates learning and knowledge sharing, increases employee retention and engagement, reduces burnout, sparks innovation, and improves employee and organizational performance.

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For decades, this was a deeply personal and uncomfortable question no one wanted to answer. But pay transparency is becoming more mainstream today. Already seven states require employers to disclose salary ranges during the hiring process.

And more workers are taking matters into their own hands, too. On social media, people are openly sharing what they do for work and how much money they make. The goal is to empower others to seek higher pay and to address pay inequity, which disproportionately affects women and minorities.

One of the leading voices in this movement is Hannah Williams, a 26-year-old content creator from Alexandria, Va. who in April 2022 launched Salary Transparent Street, a viral TikTok series in which she asks strangers across the country how much money they make. Her videos have reached tens of millions of people with short, lively interviews that feature teachers, nurses, data analysts, and government workers, all revealing their pay. Recent videos highlighted an event planner making $80,000 per year; an interpreter making $43,000; a college statistics professor making $70,000; a software engineer making $191,000; a nurse anesthetist making $280,000; and a water vendor outside the White House who reported making $3,000–$4,000 per week.

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The idea of mindfulness activities promoting healthy and restful sleep isn’t novel; in fact, there are numerous mindfulness methods that are both poised to improve mood and get someone in the space that invites restful sleep. Some hinge on breathing exercises; others focus more so on meditation; and others still ask you to practice mental exercises, like cognitive shuffling. Another option to add to your bedtime toolbox? Savoring, a mindfulness technique that involves concentrating on positive thoughts and basking in the joy and peace such thoughts bring you as a means to ease into sleep.

Research on savoring has positively connected it to well-being in general, and a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Gerontology and Geriatrics examined its effect on sleep. According to the findings, “higher levels of savoring were significantly associated with lower levels of sleep-related impairment.” On the flip side, rumination, or dwelling on thoughts and memories that aren’t happiness-inducing, was associated with higher levels of sleep impairment and disturbance.

While more research is needed to connect a causal relationship between A+ sleep and savoring, we can still deduce that putting yourself in happy state before bed stands to help your case when it comes to having sweet dreams. Given that stress and sleep have an adversarial relationship, it make sense that putting yourself in a positive mindset absent of stress would help your case.

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Imagine waking up in pitch darkness paralyzed from head to toe. You try to scream but can’t. Suddenly you realize there is a ghost with bloody fangs hovering over you. Before you know, the creature violently attacks you.

While this sounds like something out of a horror movie, experiences like this called sleep paralysis are quite common as shown in our research in more than six countries.

Sleep paralysis—paralysis upon falling asleep or awakening—affects about 1 in 5 people. If being paralyzed when waking up isn’t chilling enough, some people worldwide encounter terrorizing bedroom intruders, ranging from magical witches and demons to blood-sucking vampires. These surreal sights can best be described as a nightmare coming alive before your eyes.

But why does sleep paralysis occur and, crucially, why does it come with these uncanny visions? Although the science behind the bodily paralysis is now understood, it has remained a mystery why you might see a ghost.

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