All Articles
Why Scientists Need to Get High
Psychoactive drugs have long been hailed as miracle cures. But you can only understand the paths they blaze through the mind if you’ve traveled them.
Why Do People Believe the Earth Is Flat?
One question for José Arroyo-Barrigüete, an economist at Comillas Pontifical University in Spain.
Is Consciousness More Like Chess or the Weather?
Our minds seem both physical and intangible. That paradox has gripped this neuroscientist since childhood.
AI Shouldn’t Decide What’s True
Experts on why trusting artificial intelligence to give us the truth is a foolish bargain.
The Two-Century Quest to Quantify Our Senses
From speaking flowers to smart watches, we've been seeking to understand ourselves with data since the 19th century.
The World Is Full of Sleeping Beauties
Success in nature and culture depends just as much on timing as it does on brilliance.
How Can We Discourage Mass Shootings?
One question for Maurizio Porfiri and Rayan Succar, dynamical systems engineers at New York University.
The Challenge of Deep-Sea Taxonomy
Miles below the ocean’s surface, should the old rules still apply?
The 19th-Century Trippers Who Probed the Mind
In the age of self-experiment, scientists took mind-altering drugs to test the limits of subjectivity.
When Disease Comes for the Scientist
The nurse told him: You have malaria—the kind that kills you. So why wasn’t it killing the birds?
Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
Our minds haven’t evolved to deal with machines we believe have consciousness.
