The Conversation

America has 1.5 million nonprofits and room for more

Written by Robert Christensen, Associate Professor, Romney Institute of Public Management, Brigham Young University

Overcrowding is harder to define than it may appear.adike/Shutterstock.com

The nation’s 1.5 million nonprofits do everything from fielding Little League teams to funding orchestras.

Despite all the good these organizations do, some donors worry that the nation has more nonprofits than it can sustain. In America alone, more than 36,000 of them...

The ghost of Roy Orbison goes on tour – and some aren't happy about it

Written by Peter Lehman, Professor, Department of English and Director, Center for Film, Media and Popular Cutlure, Arizona State University

In January, the production company Base Hologram announced its forthcoming Roy Orbison hologram tour, “In Dreams,” with the U.S. leg of the tour set to kick off on Oct. 1 in Oakland. For the unitiated: A computer-generated hologram of Orbison will be performing alongside an orchestra and band.

Shortly after the announcement, a handful...

Walmart tried to make sustainability affordable. Here's what happened

Written by Andrew Spicer, Associate Professor of International Business, University of South Carolina

Can Walmart go green while maintaining its commitment to low prices?AP Photo/Tom Uhlman

What a difference the birth of a granddaughter can make.

For Lee Scott, who ran Walmart from 2000 to 2009, the arrival of his granddaughter not only convinced him the threat of global warming was real but set him on a course that altered the very DNA of the world...

Jury finds Monsanto liable in the first Roundup cancer trial – here's what could happen next

Written by Richard G. "Bugs" Stevens, Professor, School of Medicine, University of Connecticut

Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson reacts after hearing the verdict in his case against Monsanto at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, Aug. 10, 2018. Josh Edelson/Pool Photo via AP

In the first of many pending lawsuits to go to trial, a jury in San Francisco concluded on Aug. 10 that the plaintiff had developed cancer from exposure to...

¿Por qué nuestro cerebro siempre encuentra problemas?

Written by David Levari, Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychology, Harvard University

¿Cómo puede alguien saber si está progresando en la resolución de un problema, si el cerebro humano está diseñado para continuamente redefinir las condiciones de esa resolución?ra2studio/www.shutterstock.com

¿Por qué en la vida se nos presentan tantos problemas que parecen aferrarse a...

How 'story maps' redraw the world using people's real-life experiences

Written by Lauren Drakopulos, PhD Candidate, Department of Georgaphy, University of Washington

Story maps like this one can help policymakers better understand and respond to the needs of recently resettled refugees. S. Juneja, Author provided

Maps are an important part of our everyday lives.

We use them for driving directions, to look up restaurants or stores and parse election data. We can even use smartphone maps to locate friends when...

Profit, not free speech, governs media companies' decisions on controversy

Written by Amanda Lotz, Fellow, Peabody Media Center; Professor of Media Studies, University of Michigan

What causes a media business to bar the door?yanin kongurai/Shutterstock.com

For decades, U.S. media companies have limited the content they’ve offered based on what’s good for business. The decisions by Apple, Spotify, Facebook and YouTube to remove content from commentator Alex Jones and his InfoWars platform follow this same pattern.

M...

Apple's $1 trillion value doesn't mean it's the 'biggest' company

Written by Jerry Davis, Professor of Management and Sociology, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

On Aug. 2, Apple became the first U.S. public corporation to achieve a US$1 trillion valuation, making it the largest company in the world – by one measure at least.

A New York Times article proclaimed that this milestone “reflects the rise of powerful megacompanies” that control a large and growing share of all corporate...

Why Trump shouldn't leverage the government's emergency oil supply to bolster the GOP

Written by Peter Shulman, Associate Professor of History, Case Western Reserve University

President Gerald Ford discussing plans for a Strategic Petroleum Reserve with workers in California in 1975Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum

President Donald Trump has publicly griped about the prices of oil and gasoline, which are at their highest levels in four years.

If oil supplies were to suddenly grow, those prices might well...

What is causing Florida's algae crisis? 5 questions answered

Written by Karl Havens, Professor, Director of Florida Sea Grant, University of Florida

Algae cover the surface of the Caloosahatchee River at the W.P. Franklin Lock and Dam, July 12, 2018, in Alva, Florida. AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

Editor’s note: Two large-scale algae outbreaks in Florida are killing fish and threatening public health. Along the southwest coast, one of the longest-lasting red tide outbreaks in the state’s...