The illusion of effort. Rory Sutherland shares the story of the highly successful Chamberlen family from the 1500s. Chamberlens acquired an extremely good reputation for delivering babies during difficult births — and charged a lot to do so. Their success lay in psychology. When called, the Chamberlens would arrive with an unbelievably heavy box hauled into the birthing chamber. The pregnant woman would have a blanket which covered everything below breast height. She could listen to the...

Toy motivation. In 1994, David Novak was promoted to Pizza Hut CEO. He wasn’t excited. "It was a graveyard for executives," he said. "Morale was down, business was down. It needed energy injected into the business.” The solution? A rubber chicken. Novak handed out a mini rubber chicken toy (and a relatively small cash bonus) to hundreds of high-performing employees. Not much of a gift, but a surprising impact. The tiny gift had a dramatic impact. "This took off like you wouldn't believe it...

It's not new. It's Black Friday today, and you'll undoubtedly see news articles and social posts lamenting modern-day consumers' unparalleled and insatiable demand. Yet, history suggests this isn't the case. David Grann shares what happened in Cherokee Outlet in 1893 in his book The Killers of the Flower Moon. “After the U.S. government purchased the land from the Cherokee, it announced that a settler would be able to claim one of the 42,000 parcels of land—if he or she got to the spot...