Business analyst Francis Evans once studied insurance salesmen to find out what made them successful Surprisingly competence wasn rsquo t the key factor Instead Evens found customers were more likely to buy from salesmen with the same politics education and even height as them Academics call this homophily the tendency to prefer people like us Homophily is at work in other areas of life too with us tending to marry and befriend people similar to us While natural homophily can be destructive when left unchecked When we only prefer ldquo our kind rdquo of people society can fracture along racial [... more]

A friend of mine works on a hospital ship called Africa Mercy which takes free healthcare to developing countries The staff daily serve hundreds of patients whose ailments would otherwise go untreated TV crews who periodically board the ship point their cameras on its amazing medical staff who fix cleft palates and reset club feet hellip [... more]