Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

Our brains are wired to fear threats that cause us dread--which is an actual term of art in the risk business. Dread represents all of our evolutionary fears, hopes, lessons, prejudices, and distortions wrapped up in one dark X factor.

In my book, I tried to condense a lot of risk research into one shorthand equation for dread:

Dread = Uncontrollability + Unfamiliarity + Imaginability + Suffering + Scale of Destruction + Unfairness

As I read about the Toyota story, about cars accelerating uncontrollably and Toyota executives watching it all…

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Five months after 9/11, two military jets shrieked across the scarred island of Manhattan at 4:30 am. I remember it well. My eyes jerked open, as the windows, the dishes, and my heart shook in place in my tiny Upper West Side apartment. Then I did what we always did those days whenever weird things happened: I went into the other room and turned on CNN. I waited for my editor to call and send me downtown, just as he had on 9/11. But nothing happened. I waited and waited, watching the ladies sell shiny earrings on the shopping network…

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Tara Parker-Pope writes today that waiting for biopsy results affects stress hormone levels just as much as finding out you’ve got cancer. A new study shows that women waiting on breast biopsy results had abnormal cortisol profiles equivalent to women who had been told they had cancer.

I never fail to be amazed by the power of stress hormones. In this case, cortisol. Cortisol is some powerful stuff, and it shows up whether or not it is really needed. When it surges through your system, it raises your blood…

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I spent the past few days talking to smart people about the brain. I wanted to know what happens to our brains during an economic meltdown of the kind we are currently experiencing. It was fascinating. You can see what I learned on Time.com.

At the end of each conversation, I asked these people--neuroscientists, anxiety experts, decision-science researchers--what they were doing differently than the rest of us during this strange period.

They aren’t checking how much they have lost, for one thing. They don’t trust their brains with that kind…

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