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Is Nessie real or just a tourism ploy? There might be more to this (in)famous monster than you think...

To better understand our place in the world, check out these groundbreaking books. 

This new pill could make it easier for people to stick to the treatment. 

AI is short for more than just 'Artificial Intelligence'. At this crucial stage in its design, we have to decide whether we want it to merely serve us, or to challenge and augment our many selves.

Every year, companies try to do things better, to find the most effective way to complete some task or to improve overall productivity. Employee learning programs play a massive part […]

Here are five ORBITER-recommended podcasts sure to challenge your thinking on what it means to be human in this world.

Anti-vaxxers may have a friend coming into the White House, and medical experts are worried.   

Our special place on the planet becomes harder to stomach the more we destroy it. 

Geneticists found certain gene variants were more influential than personality traits, such as grit.  

Christopher Hitchens argued that religion makes humans "extremely self-centered."

Envy hurts, and it can devolve into nastiness and even violence, but envy can also encourage us to aspire to our better or our best selves at work, school or at home.

Walter Martin sings about art history in his new album Arts and Leisure and makes music for your eyes.

Both biology and economics are in the “productivity selection” business. But self-interest in evolution differs greatly from self-interest in economics. Comparing them shows that excessive self-maximization has become a systemic risk.

If you avoid the common errors of reasoning that lead large majorities of subjects to do the irrational thing on repeated experiments, you may justly gloat a little.

Peanut allergies can be severe, but preventing the sensitivity may be as simple as exposing your infant to peanuts while they are young.

Wearables are underutilized. These fitness devices have the means to prevent illness before it starts by notifying doctors when a patient isn't practicing a healthy regimen.

Edinburgh is the “grey metropolis in the North.” It has been for centuries, and thanks to Unesco, the capital of Scotland will keep its dour exterior for the foreseeable future. […]

After more than two years, we’ve visited all 110 objects. Have a look back at each one! “If you keep your eyes open enough, oh, the stuff you will learn. […]

Irony lurks in the surge of interest in cognitive psychologists’ research on human reasoning: we seem to be desperately interested in reading about how poorly we think.

In the heart of our nearest big galaxy cluster, a massive spiral fights for its life. “Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But what would he have been […]

When Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque first brought Cubism onto the modern art scene in the first decade of the 20th century, the initial reviews were mixed. Like-minded artists and […]

Last week a US appellate court sided with a group of public sector employees who claimed they were fired because they "liked" the Facebook page of their boss' election opponent.

The Stories They Tell celebrates “September 12th thinking” at its best—a generosity of the spirit, a heroism within us all, and a strength to continue moving forward despite the terrible knowledge that the anarchy and insanity that spawned the attacks exists in our world.

In the early 1850s, Daniel McCallum, the General Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad, had a problem. At the time, the New York and Erie Railway was the […]

Is the overconsumption of sugar the cause of chronic metabolic disease? 

Getting risk wrong leads to dangers all by itself, and we will remain vulnerable to these mistakes until we let go of our naïve post-Enlightenment faith in reason and accept that risk perception is inescapably an affective system, not just a matter of rationally figuring out the facts. 

“The owl of Minerva,” Hegel wrote, “takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.” A year ago I launched Praxis as a forum for thinking reflectively about […]

New York City recently became radicalized out of necessity in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Simply put, when systems broke down, New Yorkers improvised, and took matters into their own hands. 

For the third year running, here’s a very personal, very subjective, “I can’t read everything, so I probably left out something, so mention it in the comments, OK?” list of […]

With the presidential election less than a month away, it’s hard to go to a museum or gallery in the United States right now and not see art that either […]