These days, when I’ve listened in on strangers’ conversations—all properly socially distanced and discretely of course—I’ve heard several fatigued souls talk about how they’d…

People running through the streets in terror, stores being looted for supplies, and, of course, people eating other people. In World War Z, the film adaptation of Max Brooks’ successful…

World War II bomber planes returned from their missions riddled with bullet holes. The first response was, not surprisingly, to add armor to those areas most heavily damaged. However,…

How much would you pay to prevent your own child becoming blind?Photograph by 1000Photography / ShutterstockLast fall Fiery Cushman, the director of the Moral Psychology Research Lab…

Any assumptions about properties like intelligence or agency that we make based on what we currently know about life on Earth are on exceedingly shaky ground.Photograph by European…

Consider Data, the android from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Suppose he finds himself on a hostile planet, surrounded by aliens that are just about to dismantle him. In a last-ditch…

Karl Friston wanted me to know he had plenty of time. That wasn’t quite true. He just didn’t want our conversation—about his passion, the physics of mental life—to end. Once…

Panpsychists look at the many rungs on the complexity ladder of nature and see no obvious line between mind and no-mind.Illustration by Yurchanka Siarhei / ShutterstockThis month,…

Abraham Ortelius, with his comprehensive atlas, gave us not disenchantment, but a differing enchantment—a sense of the sheer magnitude of the planet.Wikicommons Now that we’re…

In the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous models are being used to predict the future. But as helpful as they are, they cannot make sense of themselves. They rely on epidemiologists and other…