A pervasive fear of overpopulating the world swept America and other countries in the late 1960s and ‘70s, but a revolution in food production turned predictions of a population bomb into a worldwide boom.
As scientists began to develop in-vitro fertilization in the ‘70s for parents struggling to have a baby, experts and media piled on with frightening predictions that almost stopped the invention that has helped millions of families today dead in its track.
In the months and days leading up to the year 2000, many grew alarmed that a computer bug would collapse networks and bring down economies and global stability in its wake. Did we narrowly avoid the apocalypse because of some world-saving last minute de-bugging? Or was the worldwide panic just way off base?
To address rising health problems in the 1980s, scientists and policymakers developed the US Food Pyramid to encourage healthy eating. But despite a massive public education campaign, obesity and diabetes continued to rise. What happened? How did we get it so… wrong?
Much of our shared understanding about drugs and addiction came from a series of studies done in the 1950s and 60s on lab rats. But a skeptical researcher has designed his own study that involves, well... essentially an amusement park for rats, and the surprising results may show that everything we think we know about addiction is all… wrong.
