“This will help people take meaningful steps to slow the rate of aging and increase what we call their health span or their kind of time of life expectancy free from disease.”

“Our conscious awareness is everything. And the fact that it’s still so mysterious to scientists and to all of humanity, the fact that it’s still one of the great unsolved mysteries makes it something that everyone can be excited about and that inspires awe in everyone.”

We tend to trust our intuitions about consciousness because they feel immediate and personal, but feeling convinced is not the same as being right. Annaka Harris explores what happens when […]

Stoicism has been flattened into slogans about toughness, detachment, and emotional silence, a version that’s easy to sell, but mostly wrong.  Massimo Pigliucci returns Stoicism to its original purpose: a […]

“I continue to believe that in the long run, boys, young men will believe their eyes more than their ears.”

“It’s much better to try to understand how the world works and then act accordingly. Rather than trying to impose on the world the way we want to think or the way we preferred things to be.”

“The big question then is why are most people resilient and why are some people not resilient?”

“Being connected to another person makes us feel safer and keeps our bodies at a kind of physiologic equilibrium that promotes health.”

“How can all the diversity and, sort of, seeming order that’s out there in the world emerge from a process dependent upon chance?”

“Social media is the perfect recipe for kids to become addicted to their smartphones.”

“The problem with cognitive scripts is when we use them to make more important decisions in our lives, we let our choices be driven by those stories that we have internalized that tell us how we’re supposed to behave in a certain situation.”

David S. Goyer explains how paying attention to mystery, and not brushing it aside, became the foundation for the way he builds stories, characters, and worlds.

“The next revolution will be quantum computers that will make the digital computer look like an abacus.”

“The problem is in our information. Humans, yes, we are generally good and wise, but if you give good people bad information, they make bad decisions.”

There’s bad failure — the kind we ignore or hide — and good failure, which becomes data for future progress. Three experts discuss how to tell the difference.

Having explored the Mariana Trench, the summit of Everest, and the edge of space, Victor Vescovo knows what awe feels like in its most dramatic forms. What surprised him most was how often that same feeling appears in everyday life.

Our brains weren’t built for the amount of info we deal with now. That’s why scientists have made the case for a “second brain” — a place to dump ideas so you can actually see how they connect later.

Ninety million years after our lineages split, humans are beginning to listen to whales in a new way. Marine biologist David Gruber shares the work that has become his life’s pursuit: learning how to hear the planet’s largest mammals.

“Until very recently, I thought I would die with the same genome that I was born with.”

“Old systems of the past are collapsing, and new systems of the future are still to be born. I call this moment the great progression.”

“Why would adding shame and blame help me improve my behavior?”

“I’ve started to think about three puzzles we need to solve for as we bring these technologies into our organizations.”

“Psychedelics crosscut so many interesting domains. They’ve been used for time immemorial by indigenous cultures. In our own Western cultural history, they really exploded on the scene in the 1960s, and were associated with radical changes to society.”

Everything ever seen — every star, mountain, and face — makes up less than 5 percent of the universe. Astrophysicist Janna Levin reminds us that the rest — dark matter and dark energy — is invisible, mysterious, and everywhere. We are the luminous exception in a universe of darkness.

“What’s really interesting about neural networks is the way that they think or the way that they operate is a lot like human intuition”

“I think that there are very good arguments to believe that there are some kind of foundational principle of the universe, some necessarily existing being, some first cause.”

Reflecting on the final moments she spent with her mother, and the weeks afterwards spent cataloging her life in objects and memories, Poet Laureate of the Ordinary Kelly Corrigan shares how important it is to attune, to behold, and to notice — even if it’s difficult or uncomfortable:

From science to philosophy, three perspectives explore why humans can’t stop asking “why.” Our search for purpose, they suggest, is less about finding answers and more about learning how to move forward.

“Progress happens when we choose to make it happen. It happens through choice and effort. And ultimately, to make progress happen, we have to believe in it.”

“People got skeptical, fearful, doubtful of the very idea of progress in the 20th century and we allowed that to slow down progress itself.”