Six of the Best 968

"A decade of data shows that giving people cash instead of food or other in-kind aid empowers recipients, is harder to steal, and pumps money into local economies. In some settings, recipients’ assets, nutrition, and even survival outcomes increase." Jina Moore explains why the Nobel-winning World Food Program is one of many agencies increasingly handing out cash rather than goods.

Barry Eichengreen says Scotland needs a new currency if it wants independence

"Those studies led to my questioning the story that our society told about those we call “mad,” and I got a book contract to dig into that question. That project turned into Mad in America, which told of the history of our society’s treatment of the seriously mentally ill, from colonial times until today—a history marked by bad science and societal mistreatment of those so diagnosed." Robert Whitaker is concerned that psychiatric drugs do more harm than good.

Noel Casler spills the beans on what he saw of Donald Trump when working behind the scenes on Celebrity Apprentice.

The 1971 British film Unman, Wittering and Zigo.is discussed by Kimberly Lindbergs.

Oliver Soden explores the musical of an 18th-century cat "memorably described by [Christopher] Smart as 'surpassing in beauty', a 'mixture of gravity and waggery' who can tread 'to all the measures upon the musick', his tongue 'exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in musick'."