Adjacent Weekend

This week: the mystery-solving thrill of an insanity defense that actually worked, the University of Waterloo's strange pipeline into Silicon Valley, an economist's case that government bureaucracy is a hidden tax, and why TV comedy may have died somewhere around "The Bear."

When an Insanity Defense Worked

Ian Parker follows the case of Michael Barisone, a top dressage trainer who shot one of his students — and the improbable path his defense took through the legal system's rarest verdict. A story about horses, class, and mental illness that never settles into an easy read of any of them.

The New Yorker · 20 min

What's In The Water At Waterloo?

Ashlee Vance examines why a mid-sized Canadian engineering school has become one of the most reliable feeder pipelines into Silicon Valley's most demanding companies. A study of culture — how a program built around co-op placements and unglamorous grind produces the kind of "cracked" engineer everyone claims to want and few actually train.

Core Memory · 15 min

Improv and the Death of Comedy

A conversation with comedy writer Jay Martel that treats a real question seriously: why has TV comedy gone quiet, and did something break around the rise of prestige dramedies like "The Bear"? The piece delivers a sharp, insider's autopsy of a genre rather than a nostalgia piece.

I Might Be Wrong · 18 min

My excellent Conversation with Annie Lowrey

Tyler Cowen talks with Annie Lowrey about her book "The Time Tax" — the idea that the hours Americans lose to bureaucratic friction (renewing a license, appealing a denied claim) function as an invisible, regressive tax. The conversation ranges wider than the book, into inequality, paperwork, and why some countries just make life easier.

Marginal Revolution · 25 min (audio/transcript)

“The most interesting part of this story is how the highlanders were so isolated for so long.” — Marginal Revolution, on Papua New Guinea

Why Papua New Guinea is so interesting

A short, dense essay on the country with arguably the most linguistic diversity on Earth — over 800 languages — and what centuries of geographic isolation did to its social structure. A genuine detour into a place most reading lists never reach.

Marginal Revolution · 10 min

Jacob Weisberg on the Contagion of Cowardice

Weisberg, who chairs the Committee to Protect Journalists, talks with Yascha Mounk about institutional timidity — how fear spreads through newsrooms, universities, and law firms once the first ones flinch. Courage reframed as a collective-action problem rather than an individual virtue.

Persuasion · 22 min