Connections

17 articles
  • Article Image

    Genetics

    This Famous Aging Researcher Doesn’t Want Us to Live Forever

    In the Netflix anime series Knights of Sidonia, humankind is marooned in a spaceship 500,000-strong, refugees constantly on the run from shapeshifting aliens who destroyed Earth over 1,000 years ago. Both the patriarchy and poverty have been smashed. Advances in genetic engineering have allowed androgynous individuals to proliferate and asexual reproduction to become commonplace. Everybody […]

  • Article Image

    Psychology

    You’re a Bad Judge of How Good-looking You Are

    Why are we such bad judges of how others see us? Epley’s answer is that other people are novices about us, while we’re experts.“The Green Mirror” (1911) by Guy Rose / Wikicommons There’s the full-body bedroom mirror, the bathroom mirror, and the trusty living-room mirror, the one closest to the front door—the last one I […]

  • Article Image

    Physics

    Why Water Is Weird

    One day, frustrated after many hours of meditation and practice, Bruce Lee, still a teenager, went sailing. His martial arts teacher, Yip Man, had been instructing Lee in the art of detachment, a key facet of gung fu. Lee couldn’t let go. “On the sea I thought of all my past training and got mad […]

  • Thulin_HERO-F

    Neuroscience

    Why Some Sports Fans Have More Fun

    How mirror neurons affect the experience of fandom.

  • Dyson_HERO-F

    History

    Another Side of Feynman

    Nine letters by Freeman Dyson portray his relationship with the Nobel Laureate.

  • Article Image

    Zoology

    What Is It Like to Be a Dolphin?

    Maybe dolphins are more “tuned in” with the world around them, by necessity: a holistic blend of the physical, sensory, and cognitive, all seamless enough to remember to go up for air. Photograph by Matthew Baya / Flickr Humans have come to fetishize dolphins: their smiles, their penchant for heavy petting, and they imbue their […]