Specialty Digest

DISCOVER IDEAS THAT SHAPE OUR WORLD

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Explainer

The latest Specialty Digest coverage in Explainer.

Explainer

Society
A clock being adjusted for daylight saving time, the twice-yearly practice of shifting clocks forward or back an hour

What Is Daylight Saving Time, and Why Do We Still Use It?

Twice a year, most of the country loses or gains an hour of sleep, offices argue about whether the microwave clock is right, and someone inevitably asks the same question: what is daylight saving time, and why do we still use it, when the twice-yearly switch seems to annoy nearly everyone? The practice has survived […]

What Is Daylight Saving Time, and Why Do We Still Use It? Read More »

A century-old wartime measure still governs when Americans lose and gain an hour of sleep each year. Here is where it came from, and why it hasn't gone away.

Leadership
A team of colleagues stacks their hands together in a huddle, symbolizing the trust that high-performing teams build with each other.

How Do You Build Trust on a Team?

Every team has a version of the same quiet question running underneath its work: can I say what I actually think here, or will it cost me? How you build trust on a team determines the answer, and it shapes almost everything downstream of it — how fast people flag problems, how honestly they give

How Do You Build Trust on a Team? Read More »

Trust doesn't come from a values statement — it accumulates from structure, transparency, and consistent follow-through.

Entrepreneurship
Business leader presenting to a team, illustrating how founder and CEO responsibilities differ as a company grows

What Is the Difference Between a Founder and a CEO?

Plenty of business cards say Founder and CEO on the same line, which makes the two words look interchangeable. They are not. What is the difference between a founder and a CEO? A founder is the person who started the company; a CEO is the person running it today, and in a young startup those

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A founder started the company; a CEO runs it today. Here is why those are different jobs, and how to tell when a founder should grow into the CEO role or step aside.

Leadership
Organizational leaders sit together for a panel discussion, the kind of collaborative visioning associated with transformational leadership.

What Is Transformational Leadership?

Some leaders manage the work in front of them; others change what the people doing the work believe is possible. That second group is practicing what researchers call transformational leadership — a style built less on issuing directives and more on articulating a vision compelling enough that people push past their own expectations to reach

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A leadership style built on inspiring people to exceed their own expectations, rather than simply directing their tasks.

Society
Outdoor thermometer displaying temperature in Fahrenheit, the temperature scale still used across the United States

Why Do Some Countries Use Fahrenheit Instead of Celsius?

Step outside almost anywhere else in the world and the forecast comes in Celsius. Step outside in the United States and it’s Fahrenheit, still, in 2026, decades after nearly every other country switched over. Why do some countries use Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, when the metric alternative is objectively simpler math? The answer is less

Why Do Some Countries Use Fahrenheit Instead of Celsius? Read More »

Nearly every country switched to Celsius decades ago. Here is why the United States never finished the job, and what it would take to change that now.

Entrepreneurship
Market vendor displaying priced products for sale, illustrating how small businesses set prices for goods and services

How Do You Actually Price a Product or Service?

Set the price too low and a business quietly starves even while sales look healthy. Set it too high with nothing to justify the number and customers never show up at all. How do you actually price a product or service, given that there is no single correct number, only a method that fits the

How Do You Actually Price a Product or Service? Read More »

Cost-plus, value-based, or competitive: how founders actually choose a price, and why the right method depends on what makes the product different.

Business
Stacks of assorted world currency banknotes representing foreign currency exchange rates

What Makes Currency Exchange Rates Fluctuate?

Open a currency-conversion app on two different days and the number staring back can be noticeably different — sometimes by a fraction of a percent, sometimes by several. Behind every tick of the dollar-euro or dollar-yen rate is a tangle of decisions made by central banks, traders, importers, and governments around the world. Understanding what

What Makes Currency Exchange Rates Fluctuate? Read More »

Interest rates, inflation, trade, politics, and plain speculation all push and pull on a currency -- here is how they interact.

Nature
Glowing blue bioluminescent waves crashing on a dark beach at night, caused by light-producing marine plankton

Why Do Some Animals Glow in the Dark?

A firefly blinking in a summer backyard and an anglerfish dangling a lure in the pitch-black deep sea are doing the exact same trick: making their own light. So why do some animals glow in the dark? It comes down to a chemical reaction called bioluminescence, and animals have evolved to use it for everything

Why Do Some Animals Glow in the Dark? Read More »

Bioluminescence lets fireflies find mates and anglerfish lure prey — all from the same chemical trick.

Health
A digital thermometer showing a fever reading, illustrating a key difference between a cold and the flu

What Is the Difference Between a Cold and the Flu?

You wake up feeling off. Is it the start of a cold, or something more? What is the difference between a cold and the flu isn’t always obvious in the first few hours, but the two illnesses tend to reveal themselves in distinct ways as symptoms unfold. How Quickly Symptoms Show Up One of the

What Is the Difference Between a Cold and the Flu? Read More »

Timing, fever, and body aches tell you more than a stuffy nose ever will.

Technology
A cylindrical lithium-ion battery cell like the ones wired together by the thousands to build an electric car battery pack.

How Do Electric Car Batteries Actually Work?

Pop the hood on an electric car and you will not find a single “battery” the way you might picture one, a lone box with two terminals. You will find thousands of small cells wired together, each one running the same basic chemistry that powers a phone or a laptop, just scaled up to move

How Do Electric Car Batteries Actually Work? Read More »

Inside every EV pack are thousands of lithium-ion cells shuttling ions back and forth, engineered with thermal management and regenerative braking to last a decade or more.