Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Are You Necessary or Critical?

Necessary and critical are synonyms but not equal. The former is more neutral, the latter more promotional, market-y. Which one should you use if you’re making a claim? Research from the National Academy of Sciences analyzed over 10 years of grant applications and found that more promotional language increases grant success. The relationship is really […]

Learn More May 15, 2026

Headline: Volunteering is a gateway to giving.

Volunteering as gateway to increased giving, that feels wholesome and easily worthy of a conference keynote slide next to a stock photo of smiling people in matching t-shirts. This headline is from a large, randomized field experiment with nearly 150,000 people connected to a science/environment nonprofit. The charity isn’t named but I infer it’s probably […]

Learn More May 13, 2026

A Field Report From Inside the Storm

Long before he helped launch and edit The Agitator, long before moving to New Zealand, and launching a magazine and newsletter named BayBuzz, Tom Belford spent six years building and running Ted Turner’s Better World Society –the first philanthropic venture aimed at using the then largely untapped power of television for social change. And the […]

Learn More May 11, 2026

When Asking for Money Makes People Stop Doing Good Things

Swedes are world-class recyclers, nearly 90% of bottles and cans get returned. It’s a habit and point of civic pride. Then researchers added one small twist to the recycling machines: “Press here to get your deposit.”“Or press here to donate it to charity.” And the moment that donation choice appeared, recycling dropped and the drop persisted. […]

Learn More May 6, 2026

The Manager Tax

A researcher at Strange Loop Canon ran an AI experiment with 15 tasks and three setups. An LLM model working alone. A “manager” model that split the work and delegated to AI specialist agents. And a market where models bid for the job and the best bid won. The manager cost four times more than […]

Learn More May 4, 2026

Engagement Is a Junk Drawer

The jangle fallacy is the assumption that two similar or identical things must be different because they wear different labels. Old wine in new bottles. Psychology coined the term, and psychology is where it does the most damage. A few of my favorites: Grit. In high school my kids were assigned the Duckworth book. Grit […]

Learn More May 1, 2026