What’s the best way to tax the rich? (Pacific Standard)
by Dwyer Gunn
Three different Democratic plans suggest different ways to tax the rich. Which one is best? It might depend on whether your goal is raising revenue or transforming the economy.

How words mean things (Aeon)
by David Robson
People often think of words as arbitrary symbols for things. But in many cases, the sounds humans make to represent an idea are closely tied up with a visual and tactile sense of the thing being described.

This comedy skit is 3,000 years old (Atlas Obscura)
by Noor Al-Samarrai
If you had to painstakingly inscribe all written records on clay tablets, what would you choose to record? In ancient Mesopotamia, one answer was a funny dialogue about a customer arguing about laundry service.

The aspirational lives of India’s youth (Public Books)
by Sneha Annavarapu
More than half of India’s population is under age 25. This generation has little hope of financial stability but lots of dreams of making it big—by founding a startup, becoming a star, or coming up with a really clever hustle.

The population bust (Wired)
by Megan Molteni
For decades, demographers have warned that human population growth threatens the world’s resources and could lead to mass deprivation. But what if we’re actually on a much slower growth track than previously thought?

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