Most of us want to get our “fair share” in life–whether it’s a toddler wanting the same number of cookies as their playmate or an adult wanting equal pay for equal work. We are genetically programmed ...

Larissa MacFarquhar has been writing profiles for the New Yorker since 1999. In recent years, she’s turned increasingly to questions of ethics and charity in her work, with a particular focus on ...

Larissa MacFarquhar borrowed the title of her new book, Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help, from a famous thought experiment ...

On 21st Street, between L and K, there is a homeless man who sits perched atop his small pile of possessions, observing, with a kind of detached curiosity, Washington’s harried pedestrians. I pass him ...

Why do some people become “extreme do-gooders,” willing to sacrifice their comfort, time and money to help others? "It's not just about sacrifice," says Larissa MacFarquhar who interviewed dozens of ...

Everyone knows our political system is more polarized than ever — or at least more polarized than it has been in a good long while. (The fall of 1860 was probably worse.) But do we recognize what ...