Why is knowledge getting so expensive?

Jeffrey Edmunds, TEDxPSU [YouTube] – “With the shift from books to ebooks, libraries have lost ownership of their collections. Knowledge is being privatized and monetized by multinational corporations.

 To correct this trend, we need to think of knowledge, especially the knowledge collectively funded and created at universities like Penn State, not as a private commodity, but as a public good. Jeff Edmunds is Digital Access Coordinator at the Penn State University Libraries, where he has worked for more than 35 years. He helps manage access to the Libraries’ millions of digital resources, especially eBooks, and is a fierce champion of open access to information. His texts have appeared in Nabokov Studies, 

The Slavic and East European Journal, McSweeney’s, and Formules (Paris, France), among others. Jeff has decades of experience managing electronic resources in the context of a large academic research library which he now applies in lectures regarding e-books and their privatization. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community”

Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effec

Pagnini, F., Grosso, F., Cavalera, C. et al.Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect [Full text available free]. npj Mental Health Res 4, 57 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44184-025-00171-5

Prosocial behavior, the act of helping others, is essential to social life, yet spontaneous environmental triggers for such behavior remain underexplored. This study tested whether an unexpected event, such as the presence of a person dressed as Batman, could increase prosocial behavior by disrupting routine and enhancing attention to the present moment. We conducted a quasi-experimental field study on the Milan metro, observing 138 rides. 

In the control condition, a female experimenter, appearing pregnant, boarded the train with an observer. In the experimental condition, an additional experimenter dressed as Batman entered from another door. Passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seat when Batman was present (67.21% vs. 37.66%, OR = 3.393, p < 0.001). 

Notably, 44% of those who offered their seat in the experimental condition reported not seeing Batman. These findings suggest that unexpected events can promote prosociality, even without conscious awareness, with implications for encouraging kindness in public settings. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov n° NCT06481748; registered on July 1, 2024.