blog
Should Social Psychologists Experiment with Psychedelics?
One question for Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at UC Riverside.
What Can Night-Shift Workers Do to Feel Better?
One question for Sarah Chellappa, a neuroscientist at the University of Cologne.
How Shannon Entropy Imposes Fundamental Limits on Communication
What’s a message, really? Claude Shannon recognized that the elemental ingredient is surprise.
The Real Magic of Rituals
We might call them superstitions or spells, but they genuinely drum anxiety away.
What Is Misinformation Doing to Us?
One question for Daniel Williams, a philosopher at the University of Cambridge.
Targeting Cancer’s Achilles Heel
Biden’s Cancer Moonshot aims to cut annual deaths in half. Scientists have the goal in their sights.
Why Should We Delay Gratification?
One question for Yuko Munakata, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis and director of the Cognition in Context Lab.
Are All Brains Good at Math?
Math provokes dread in so many people—yet we are all born with a sense for numbers.
What Motivates Political Violence?
One question for Katarzyna Jaśko, a social psychologist at Jagiellonian University in Poland.
It’s High Time to Protect Our High Seas
The oceans belong to no one. But we can all take part to protect them.
Should NASA Have Its Own Spaceship to Compete with SpaceX and Blue Origin?
One Question for Lori Garver, former deputy administrator of NASA.
A Numerical Mystery From the 19th Century Finally Gets Solved
Two mathematicians have proven Patterson’s conjecture, which was designed to explain a strange pattern in sums involving prime numbers.