The particular preferences people stand by tend to be very idiosyncratic, Bronnenberg notes. “It’s not that all consumers stick with their coffee preferences but migrate their preferences for sugar or pasta sauce,” he says. “I think it’s that you have some favorite things that you yourself find important, and you stick with those preferences, and others you don’t.” A certain kind of pancake mix may be nearer and dearer to your heart than, say, the kind of syrup you squirt on top of it.

Yet many people assume all sharks are alike and equally likely to bite humans. Consider the term “shark attack,” which is scientifically equivalent to “mammal attack.” Nobody would equate dog bites with hamster bites, but this is exactly what we do when it comes to sharks. So, when a reporter calls me about a fatality caused by a white shark off Cape Cod and asks my advice for beachgoers in North Carolina, it’s essentially like asking, “A man was killed by a dog on Cape Cod. What precautions should people take when dealing with kangaroos in North Carolina?”

But then the conversation drifted to our future in space. They, too, felt that the end of the Space Shuttle program could have been a finale of sorts. But as you walk around the exhibits of the museum, you realize that there have been many near-death experiences for NASA. Those include two failed shuttle flights and the deadly Apollo 1 fire in 1967. The program always bounced back. The space veterans argued about resources. Can we go to the moon and Mars? No, and there's no real reason to return to the moon, they both agreed.

 “Measles is like a canary in the mine,” says Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project and a professor of anthropology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. To protect a population from measles, she says, at least 95 percent of people need to be vaccinated – a higher threshold than for most other infections. This means that if vaccination rates start falling, “it’s going to be the first to show its ugly head.

“For example, Midwesterners have a reputation for being friendly and down-to-earth, but of the four regions, customers from the Midwest rated their customer service reps tougher than anyone else,” he says. “Likewise, Northeasterners have a reputation for being more tough and direct, but customers from this region provided the highest marks for the customer service reps they interacted with.”

Bees are responsible for pollinating more than just crops for human consumption.  A study by the University of California concluded that honey bees account for one-eighth of all pollination of non-agricultural crops across the globe.  In short, bees make life possible for an incalculable number of ecosystems.  As has been widely reported, bee populations are in decline.  

For example, there are a lot of rose-colored ideas of what it means to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs may get to make their own schedules and not have a corporate contract committing them to a set time period. However, most of their time isn’t committed to themselves. In order to successfully run a business, an entrepreneur must consistently focus on their business. 

For approximately four years now, big food brands have enjoyed an almost ubiquitous presence on social media. This is not the run-of-the-mill postings of seasonal promotions and retweets of pictures of syrupy pancakes; rather, food and food chain brands have begun to base their online presence on relatable content and pop culture riffs, using direct interaction with social media users to spread dank memes and savage clapbacks. 

Barbadian singer Rihanna has unveiled her new fashion brand with Louis Vuitton owner LVMH, a rare move by the French group to set up a label from scratch as it taps into soaring demand for celebrity collaborations in the luxury world. Fenty - after the “Umbrella” hitmaker’s full name, Robyn Rihanna Fenty - will build on the singer’s existing joint venture in cosmetics with LVMH, with a full range of clothing, shoes and accessories.

Too often lost in the furor, however, is the far more damaging TrikiLeaks – the tricks and laws used to suppress the vote by partisans, largely Republicans here at home. After the Supreme Court’s right-wing gang of five gutted key sections of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Holder, Republican-controlled states immediately ramped up efforts to create obstacles for voting, particularly for people of color.