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Read more: Can We Enter the Dreams of Others?
REMspace and the emerging science of interactive dreaming Most technologies begin as prosthetics for the waking day. We build tools that extend our hands, our hearing, our memory. Then someone asks the more unsettling question: what about the third of our lives spent elsewhere, behind closed eyelids, in that private cinema where identity can split…
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Read more: Egypt’s Sacred Cats – From Myth to Meme
Have you seen the videos? A young woman presses play on her smartphone, and a haunting melody of ancient flutes fills her living room. Her cat, previously lounging lazily on the windowsill, bolts upright. Ears perked, eyes wide, the feline seems transfixed by the mysterious music echoing from millennia past. This is a scene playing…
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Read more: What are Microplastics and Why is Everyone Talking About Them?
Every day, countless primary microplastics enter the environment directly through human use. When you rinse off a face scrub that contains tiny polyethylene beads, those particles swirl down the drain and pass through water treatment filters with ease, eventually emptying into rivers and oceans. Each time you wash a fleece jacket or polyester shirt, hundreds…
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Read more: How Room-Temperature Superconductors Could Change EVERYTHING
To understand room-temperature superconductors, we first need to grasp what a superconductor is. A superconductor is a material that conducts electricity with zero resistance – meaning, an electric current can flow through it without any energy lost as heat. This phenomenon, discovered in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, is extraordinary because in ordinary conductors (like…
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Read more: Why Aren’t We 3D Printing More Houses?
As Americans struggle with affordable housing and developing nations experience population surges, something occurred to me. About a decade ago 3D printed housing was supposed to help pull us into a new era of construction. Why hasn’t it happened? Let’s lay some groundwork. 3D-printed homes, built by robotic systems that extrude material (usually a concrete-based…
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Read more: Why We Engage with Political Rage Bait
Social media was once envisioned as a marketplace of ideas bringing people together. Paradoxically, it often does the opposite – provoking outrage-driven engagement. A recent study coined the “confrontation effect” to describe how people are more likely to interact with content that challenges their views than content that affirms them. In other words, posts that…
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Read more: Tesla’s Pigeon: A Genius, His Friend, and the Myth of the “Bird Brain”
In the last few months I’ve become very close to birds. I’ve been raising a family of quails in my home. My new-found connection to the emotional and intellectual lives of birds reminded me of a story I’d heard about the genius of the modern world… In the twilight of his life, a lone figure…
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Read more: The Rise of Dark Christmas: Folklore, Mischief, and Pop Culture
On a crisp December night, under twinkling lights and candy cane stripes, a different kind of Christmas spirit stirs. Instead of sugarplum fairies, we glimpse horned silhouettes and skeletal grins peeking from the edges of our holiday cheer. A new generation has welcomed old ghosts and dark visitors into the season’s festivities. Figures like Krampus,…
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Read more: The Winter Within – How Christmas Affects the Mind & Body
Twinkling lights, cheerful carols, and promises of peace on Earth – Christmas arrives each year painted in joyous colors. Yet behind the festive facade lies a more complex human experience. For many people, the holiday season is as much a time of emotional strain as it is of celebration. The contrast between Hallmark-card ideals and…
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Read more: Holidays without Christmas: A Collection of Winter Festivals from Around the World
As a non-christian omnist, I have complicated feelings about the celebration of Christmas. Although we in the United States are often told that a “traditional” Christ-focused Christmas is central to the American identity, the truth is that Christmas was outlawed for several decades by a congress that was, arguably, made up of more practicing Christians.…
