Researchers recorded brain activity and body movement in novice and intermediate basketball players taking 50 shots each, then compared makes with misses. Successful shots showed more consistent movement, with a steadier base from the feet and lower body and less variation at the wrist and elbow. Brain activity was also more stable on makes, while misses showed the player still correcting mid-motion. This matches what learning looks like: beginners think through each movement consciously, and only with repetition does the movement become automatic. Under pressure, that conscious attention can return, disrupting the coordination built through practice and explaining why a player who has made a shot thousands of times can suddenly miss.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.