“Rick and Morty” explores both profound or wacky what-ifs, and more humanistic concerns, like dealing with a divorce or failing high-school. Adult Swim / Turner Broadcasting SystemThe…

Almost a quarter of Japanese men and a tenth of Japanese women over age 60 say there is not a single person they could rely on in difficult times. The American crisis may not be so…

From an office at Carnegie Mellon, my colleague John Miller and I had evolved a computer program with a taste for genocide. This was certainly not our intent. We were not scholars…

The effects of centuries of natural disaster may be most obvious in Japanese culture.“Nichiren Calming the Storm,” a 19th century painting by Utagawa Kuniyoshi / Hulton…

Experiencing small doses of negative emotions, elicited by an offensive joke, may make us more resilient to future, more serious set backs.Photograph by Barry Brecheisen / Getty ImagesIn…

As a kid visiting the Oregon coast I often wondered, “How wide is the ocean, and what is there beyond the horizon?” As I grew older and turned my sights to the night sky, I wondered…

When it comes to the ethics of actions, such as the decision to terraform Mars, we should ask: What sort of person would do that—a virtuous or vicious one?Photograph by Kees Veenenbos…

Damore was fired, basically, for making a well-meant, if amateurish, attempt at institutional design, based on woefully incomplete information he picked from published research studies.…

Picture this. Sitting at the dinner table 50 years from now, you explain to your grandchildren that meat was once grown on living beings—who were bred, fed, transported, slaughtered,…

Reflections on Sam Shepard’s time at the Santa Fe Institute Sam Shepard in the 1970s.sam-shepard.comI was first introduced to Sam by our mutual friend Valerie Plame Wilson. Sam had…