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We are not the center of the Universe, but life is.

“We suffer more often in the imagination than in reality.”

People think that unhappiness causes our minds to wander, but what if the causation goes the other way?

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself — and there isn’t one.”

Einstein hated “spooky action at a distance,” but much to his chagrin, quantum mechanics remains as spooky as ever.

The four-color theorem was one of the past century’s most popular and enduring mathematical mysteries.

Perhaps downhill and cross-country skiers don’t face the fate of potters, typesetters and saddlers, but their situation is certainly unclear.

Here are 10 physics courses you can take now with some of the best experts in the world.

Geologically, it might be the most intense Hawaiʻian eruption in over 200 years. But not a single person has died, thanks to science. Hawaii, a chain of islands in the Pacific […]

Spontaneous talk on surprise topics. Author Salman Rushdie on the secret life of cities and so much more. 

A popular physicist shares why he believes that the deepest nature of reality is hidden from us.

The “constant points of light” in the sky are often anything but. “To be is to be the value of a variable.” –Willard Van Orman Quine We look up at […]

As study after study shows, women receive an enormous amount of abuse for any online activity: whether as journalists, sex writers, performers. Just being a woman (online) is sufficient to […]

Humans can contract the parasite by ingesting anything contaminated with cat feces. 

As our political and media systems rapidly evolve, social scientists are revisiting and updating existing models, theories, and methods for investigating the effects of the media on political attitudes and […]

Are people naturally good or evil? How much of our mental life is unconscious? Are our desires hard-wired by evolution? On the evening of Monday, March 21st, renowned psychologist and […]

From restarting the economy to dealing with climate change, society’s biggest questions turn on how they are defined by advocates and the news media and acted upon by the public […]

Earlier today, in response to Sheril Kirshenbaum’s query at Discover’s Intersection blog, I spotlighted the key influence of opinion-leaders on energy related behavior.  As a follow up, let’s take a […]

This spring in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]

Part 1 of the Q&A from Dr. Boris Behncke of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Catania.