In 1954, psychologist Muzafer Sherif engineered a tribal war between two groups of 11-year-old boys in two camps inside Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. They were given tasks, rewards, and objectives — the kind of thing that would be prime-time reality TV these days. Before lon … | Continue reading
Student loans continue to burden adults decades after they’ve left school, and credit card debt haunts many Americans. On the flip side, many of us make leveraged investments in our homes, taking out mortgages to buy houses that we expect to appreciate in value. In other words, d … | Continue reading
I have a group of cycling friends and we all go mountain biking together away about twice a year. I get on well with everyone apart from [one guy], who recently ruined the last trip for me by being antagonistic. He’s an ex-soldier and holds very right-wing views. I’m very liberal … | Continue reading
Every now and then, I fantasize about the end of the world. I imagine what it would be like if it were just me left (and a few loved ones, I suppose). I run through all the fun to be had — the fast cars I’d drive, the mansions I’d commandeer, and the luxury clothes I’d wear. Ther … | Continue reading
Less than a century ago, we had many different ideas for what the history of our Universe looked like, but shockingly little evidence available to decide the issue. Hypotheses included suggestions that our Universe: violated the principle of relativity, and that the light we obse … | Continue reading
Hunting for life on other planets is hard; it’s like trying to spot an ant on the other end of a football field. The closest potential host, Venus, is 25 million miles away. Beyond our Solar System, exoplanets that have piqued astronomers’ interest are light-years away. To search … | Continue reading
Many summers ago, when I was young, I got some booze, I got drunk, and I got a hangover. The next morning, I told my dad what happened over breakfast. “We had some wine at the restaurant,” I groaned, “and then a few beers at Mark’s house. It doesn’t seem enough for me to feel thi … | Continue reading
There are a number of grand questions we can ask about the Universe that cut right to the very core of what reality actually is, and were some of the biggest head-scratchers for all of human history. Questions like, “What is the Universe?” “How big is it?” and “Was it eternal, or … | Continue reading
On Christmas Day, 2021, an Ariane 5 rocket leaped from its launch pad in French Guiana. Perched on the rocket’s nose was the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The JWST was designed to perform several tasks, but one of the most important was to study the first stars … | Continue reading
In 2011, software engineer and satirist Manu Cornet posted a cartoon on his blog mocking Microsoft’s culture of cutthroat competition under CEO Steve Ballmer. The cartoon depicted the company’s org chart as a collection of guns, each one pointing at another employee. It became a … | Continue reading
Nothing in this Universe lasts forever, no matter how large, massive, or enduring it appears to be. Every star that’s ever born will someday run out of fuel in its core and die. Every galaxy that’s actively forming stars will someday run out of star-forming material and cease doi … | Continue reading
Bret broke up with his long-term girlfriend. He’s lonely and cries more often than anyone knows. Stuck in a dark place, he picks up the phone and messages Anth. Anth isn’t a close friend, but Bret picked him over his dad, his brother, and his best friend is because Anth went thro … | Continue reading
Research has shown that the most important factor in determining how you respond to stress is how you think about your ability to handle it. Don’t miss the significance of this statement. The power to determine your best response to stress is in your control, and it depends on no … | Continue reading
I was on a plane, the regular shuttle between Boston and Washington, DC, sitting next to Steve, who had been my mentor since the day I joined BCG (Boston Consulting Group). We were in the bulkhead seats, on the right side of the plane. Yes, I do recall this detail; it was a vivid … | Continue reading
If you’ve ever gazed up at a dark and clear night sky, you might feel the same thing that I do each and every time: a feeling that it’s beckoning us and drawing us in to explore and wonder what’s out there in the great abyss of space. Each point of distant, twinkling light isn’t … | Continue reading
Behind most every tech billionaire is a sci-fi novel they read as a teenager. For Bill Gates it was Stranger in a Strange Land, the 1960s epic detailing the culture clashes that arise when a Martian visits Earth. Google’s Sergey Brin has said it was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, … | Continue reading
There is a certain kind of story about nature and our place in it that says all we experience, all we feel, is nothing but neural circuity. According to one thought experiment, if I were a smart enough doctor or computer scientist, I could put your brain in a vat, hook it up to a … | Continue reading
It was a long shot to trust the northern New England weather in early April, especially after a strange winter of warm spells followed by massive snowstorms. But hundreds of thousands of people gambled, or trusted their weather apps, and, as the atmospheric gods would have it, we … | Continue reading
When it comes to the Universe, there are some things we can be confident are out there based on what we observe. We know that the Universe was hotter, denser, and more uniform in the distant past. We know that the stars and galaxies in the Universe have grown up and evolved as th … | Continue reading
Promising personalized cancer vaccines were a recurring theme at the American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego, earlier this month. A multitude of companies are pushing forward with shots designed to help the immune system fight patients’ speci … | Continue reading
In 1796, President George Washington lambasted political parties for allowing “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” to “subvert the power of the people.” His indictment seems brutally timely today, just a few months after 147 Republican US congress members publicly challenge … | Continue reading
Using lasers and metal powder, Australian scientists have created a super strong, super lightweight new “metamaterial” — but they got the idea for this sci fi-sounding creation from plants. The challenge: Materials that are strong yet lightweight, such as carbon fiber and graphen … | Continue reading
At roughly 11:19 a.m. on April 20, 1999, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold emerged from their vehicles in the parking lots of Columbine High School. Clad in black trench coats, they started strolling toward the school entrance. Klebold lobbed a pipe bomb. Then … | Continue reading
I have a friend at work; she’s kind of a friend, but only ever a “work friend.” We have lunch together and get along, but nothing more. Lately, she’s started to spend our lunch breaks ‘trauma dumping’ on me. I don’t mind venting or offloading, but this is more than that. It’s too … | Continue reading
The quest to build a robust pipeline of high-potential leadership talent is increasingly urgent as the challenges facing organizations gain in complexity and speed. However, the current leadership gap illustrates how difficult that quest can be. One crucial question must be addre … | Continue reading
Failing is cool at the moment. This is an era of reframing. A setback isn’t bad; it’s a learning experience. An obstacle shouldn’t bother you; it’s an opportunity to grow. If you’ve read any self-help article written in the last five years, you will often find, at some point, the … | Continue reading
One thing you can be sure of, as you measure and observe the Universe around you, is this: the physical objects you see, touch, and otherwise interact with all occupy a volume of space. Whether in the form of solid, liquid, gas, or any other phase of matter, it costs energy in or … | Continue reading
Paper is to news what vinyl is to music: an outdated medium decimated by its digital replacement. Except that vinyl records have finally found their niche, and sales are up again. Newspapers haven’t yet worked out how to deal with all the advertising money that has fled online, a … | Continue reading
The development of a Smart City in Toronto, in partnership with Google, should be the realization of the tech utopia we’d been imagining. Complete with robots, autonomous cars, and the latest tech integrated into the city itself, it seems as if the residents are the lucky benefic … | Continue reading
You’ve likely heard the phrase “set and setting” when it comes to psychedelics: The quality of a trip depends on the mindset you have and the environment you’re in when you kick off a trip. But while it’s a common claim, there hasn’t been much research on the effects of set and s … | Continue reading
Whenever we think about the Universe at a fundamental level, there’s always the temptation to wonder if reality might somehow be simpler than we perceive it to be. As complex and diverse as the natural world is, it’s humbling to recognize that everything we see, perceive, and int … | Continue reading
In the not-so-distant future, the surgeons who treat our ailments might be tiny machines that swim through our bodies, tracking down cancerous tumors or clearing clots from even the smallest arteries. If this sounds like science fiction, you’re not wrong: Movies like Fantastic Vo … | Continue reading
Philosophy can often seem overly concerned with terribly abstract questions, such as whether chairs truly exist. However, the questions of philosophy cover all areas of human interest. Perhaps most importantly, several philosophers have spent time on the question of how to live a … | Continue reading
The most dramatic scientific progress occurs when a new window into the Universe gets thrown open. When I was a graduate student, for example, I was taught that Earth was born hot and dry. Any water present at our planet’s formation got boiled away. So, because the only window we … | Continue reading
Trust in science has declined. According to Pew, the share of Americans who say they have “a great deal of confidence” in scientists has fallen (from 39% in 2020 to 23% today). The view that science has positively impacted society has also tumbled (from 73% in 2019 to 57% today) … | Continue reading
In all of physics, some of the most important properties inherent to the Universe itself are constants of nature. The speed of light in a vacuum, the strength of the gravitational force between two masses, and the constant inherent to the quantum nature of the Universe, Planck’s … | Continue reading
Every culture has a story of the eschaton: the end of time. In Norse mythology, the world will end in an epic battle called Ragnarök, with gods fighting the Ice Giants. In Christian lore, the book of Revelations says the final battle will happen at Armageddon. Even modern science … | Continue reading
“I recently met a guy on a dating app and we went on a few dates. He was nice enough, and there were no red flags, but after the fourth date, I could tell things weren’t clicking, at least for me. Last week, he sent me a text inviting me to a group outing to meet some of his frie … | Continue reading
“I’ve got two kids — 3 and 7 — and I’ve done a pretty good job at not swearing around them. We went on the bus last Tuesday, and two middle-aged men got on next to us. They started dropping F-bombs and other obscenities for 20 minutes straight. I was shocked. Genuinely shocked. I … | Continue reading
“I work for a PR company. It’s big enough that you’d know it. I’m really good at my job. That’s not arrogant. It takes me 30 minutes to do things my colleagues take half a day to do. In my mind, they are inefficient and/or not that good at their job. I often resent and moan to my … | Continue reading
Staying current and competitive with AI will not only require an eye on the horizon for future trends, you’ll also need a vision that extends beyond the initial stages. You’ll need to build a long-term strategy around your AI goals to drive growth and efficiency through your inno … | Continue reading
One of the most enduring ideas in all the Universe is that everything that exists now will someday see its existence come to an end. The stars, galaxies, and even the black holes that occupy the space in our Universe will all some day burn out, fade away, and otherwise decay, lea … | Continue reading
Denis Villeneuve wasn’t the first person to adapt Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel Dune for the big screen, but he is the first to have done so successfully. In the 1970s, the Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky came close. He handed art design to renowned com … | Continue reading
Join Barbara Oakley as she delves into the concept of “Einstellung,” a psychological phenomenon where our brains become stuck in one way of thinking. Oakley explains how this tendency to stick with what we know from an early age narrows our cognitive abilities, as unused brain co … | Continue reading
We all learn from our mistakes (eventually) but sometimes it would be nice to get it right the first time. Looking back from the more experienced end of my career, and having played most of the major roles around a boardroom table, I now have a good deal more clarity about what i … | Continue reading
In one of the most monumental discoveries of the 20th century, we learned that the Universe is not simply a static, unchanging background, but rather that space itself expands as time marches on. It’s as though the very fabric of the Universe itself is stretching so that distant … | Continue reading
People across the world are becoming increasingly concerned about climate change: 8-in-10 people see climate change as a major threat to their country.1 As I have shown before, food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. There is rightl … | Continue reading
Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly planning to build a $100 billion data center and supercomputer that could lead to the creation of AIs far more capable than anything possible today. Power hungry: Soon after investing its first $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019, Microsoft set out … | Continue reading