Spontaneous talk on surprise topics. Philosopher of mind Peter Godfrey-Smith on octopus consciousness, free will, and an extinct sea-worm he’d like to resurrect.
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The title sequence to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is memorable for its minimalistic, sleek design. But what do those graphics actually say?
From an evolutionary perspective, religious practices and rituals are a form of play.
Would you rather learn philosophy from James Franco or a professor of philosophy? Well, now you don’t have to choose.
When novelists and poets reveal their writing process we learn a great deal about our own development.
We may use superlatives all the time, but that’s no substitute for quantifying just how bad, big, or important something is. This article was written by Kimberly Arcand and Megan […]
ORBITER was in the path of totality for the solar eclipse, and on our way, we were joking about which of us might scream. Turns out, how could you not?
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1.5 million children die each year from preventable diseases arising from poor sanitation systems. That’s why some of the world’s top scientists are working to make a 21st-century toilet without links to water, energy, or sewer lines, and which costs users under $0.05 a day.
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Over the course of his presidency, Barack Obama issued a total of 276 executive orders. So, what exactly does that mean?
Gravitational waves and electromagnetic ones don’t need to go together. But physics says it’s possible; what do the observations say? “The black holes collide in complete darkness. None of the […]
The event horizon is real, and we know it without even needing to see it directly. “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.” –Sam Neill, Event Horizon If […]
As wonderful as the evidence that supports or invalidates a theory is, it can never truly kill the ones that don’t work out. When it comes to science, we like to […]
The ‘Project Wing’ drone system is going to change life as we know it—and inadvertently fix all your storage problems. rn
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How looking at a single, distant galaxy cluster can show us the invisible mass filling our space like nothing else. “We find them smaller and fainter, in constantly increasing numbers, and […]
When you’re confronted by some new information, how do you tell whether it’s valid or not? “I’m old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn’t […]
Many businesses could benefit from applying the principles of design thinking to their work. However, too many businesses focus on the wrong things when they use design thinking, which can […]
Is logic an immutable, unchangeable set of rules? Or has it it evolved with time – and will it continue to do so?
Denying the possibility of immoral actions may be the very basis of our society.
Hitler is commonly thought to have been an atheist, a claim that’s often used in debates about the perils of atheistic belief on a mass scale. But was he?
If nature makes equal amounts of matter and antimatter, how are we here? When you look out at the vastness of the Universe, at the planets, stars, galaxies, and all there […]
Just because a distant body has ice doesn’t mean it’ll ever have liquid water.
Emotions are the language of the unconscious, and in day-to-day life, they prevent us from sinking beneath an overwhelming flood of information.
Astronomers make the first direct observation of a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Three eyes are so much better than two. Here’s why. “Einstein’s gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational […]
Want to be hotter? Add more mass. Want to go even hotter than that? Lose almost all of it. “A candidate is not going to suddenly change once they get into […]
Not everyone sees color the way you do. There are a suite of tools available to help graphic designers work more inclusively.
Drop a chunk of sodium metal into water, and a violent reaction ensues. But it’s more than just chemistry at play. “Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields […]
Facebook catches two AI chatbots talking in their own strange language.
It’s tempting to add the spins of the quarks together, but that’s not what the experiments agree with! “We must regard it rather as an accident that the Earth (and presumably […]
It turns out Winston Churchill wrote an essay of predictions titled ‘Fifty Years Hence’—and while he was off on the timing, some are finally coming true.