The way they invest their endowments demonstrates that — This will be a relatively short rant, er, post because it updates an argument I’ve made before: That foundations are doing no good by trying to outperform the markets when they invest their endowments. As a group, they cannot beat the markets. Herd-like, they keep trying. Worse, they pay their…

BYD is selling more cars than Tesla. That’s good for the planet. — In the fall of 2008, Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by Warren Buffett, invested about $232 million in BYD, which was then an obscure Chinese electric car company based in Shenzen, not far from Hong Kong. FORTUNE magazine assigned me to write about BYD and Buffett, and my story…

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ crusade against vaping is doing more harm than good. — This is an edited version of a talk that I gave via Zoom to the Global Nicotine Forum in Warsaw, Poland, on June 17, 2022. If anyone had told me two years ago that I would write many thousands of words about e-cigarettes and be invited to speak at a…

It’s easy to understand why Jeeshan Chowdhury, the founder and chief executive of startup Journey Colab, believes strongly in the potential of mescaline to treat alcohol use disorder. It’s also easy to see why those who want plant medicines to be used for the common good admire Journey Colab. Mescaline…

Notes from a conference on psychedelic medicines — At this week’s Psychedelic Therapeutics and Drug Development Conference, the vast majority of the speakers were white. The vast majority of the audience was white. The vast majority of people who have participated in clinical trials of psychedelic medicines that were discussed at the conference? Yes, they were white, too. …

But a study in Circulation, its medical journal, indicates that vaping is safer than smoking. — The American Heart Association calls itself “a relentless force against vaping.” It says the increase in e-cigarette use by kids and young people is a “serious public health threat.” It claims, mistakenly, that e-cigarettes have been linked to thousands of cases of serious lung injury, some resulting in death. It…

Foundations, individuals, companies and government fund research. “Everyone’s got an angle.” — By any measure, Matthew Johnson is one of the most influential scientists in the world of psychedelics. He is a professor of psychiatry and a leading researcher at Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, the largest psychedelic research institution in the U.S., where more than 40 physicians, psychologists…

The author of Brave New World was enchanted by mescaline and frustrated by the “mesozoic reptiles” of philanthropy. — Foundations can change the world with the grants that they make. Grants they don’t make matter, too. This is a story about one: A proposal to research psychedelic drugs that the Ford Foundation rejected many years ago and how the world might be different had Ford said yes. The year…

Taking carbon dioxide out of the air — an essential technology to curb climate change — is having a moment — Big technology companies, startups, investors and scientists are all getting serious about carbon removal, the technology for pulling heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the earth’s atmosphere to head off the worst impacts of climate change. It’s not a moment too soon. Global climate emissions are rising again, post-Covid. Countries are…