The Anti-Capitalist Woman Who Created Monopoly—Before Others Cashed In

The Beloved Board Game’s Long-Hidden Origin Story Debunks the Myth of Male Lone Genius

For decades, the story of Monopoly’s invention was a warm, inspiring, Horatio Alger narrative. A version of it, tucked into countless game boxes, told the tale of an unemployed man, Charles Darrow, who went to his Great Depression-era basement desperate for money to support his family. Tinkering around, he created a board game to remind them of better times, and finding modest success selling it near his home in Philadelphia, Darrow eventually sold it to the American toy and game manufacturer Parker Brothers. The game, Monopoly, became a smash …

The New Industrial Revolution Could Use a Lesson in Empathy

If You Leave Technology to the Technologists, Innovation Will Only End Up Creating More Problems

It’s hard to miss the drumbeat: Self-driving cars are coming. Self-driving cars are coming.

You may have heard about self-driving cars when Google was first on the road with a …

Openness Is the Mother of Invention

In America, Curiosity Is Often the Only Qualification You Need

From the light bulb to the iPhone, America has a long history of revolutionary inventions. So what does this ingenuity spring from? What are the conditions that allow for our …

Why Does America Prize Creativity and Invention?

Our Politics Encourage It, There's a High Tolerance of Failure, and We Idealize the Lone Inventor

In a recent episode of This American Life, producer Zoe Chace travels to the headquarters of the fast-food chain Hardee’s to get to the bottom of one of the stranger …

Inventing the Mouse Was the Least of It

The Late Doug Engelbart Created Tools That Changed the World, But People Never Understood Him or His Gifts

You may have read about the recent death of my friend and mentor Doug Engelbart. He was a special man, but the things for which he was best known in …