Melanie Challenger is a naturalist who spends a lot of time in wild places. She’s intimately familiar with birth and death, and she believes any understanding of what it means to be human must start by tuning into our animal nature.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Science
Not long ago, we thought decoding the human genome would reveal the secrets of life. That proved to be a fantasy. Now scientists are learning how to grow life outside the body — and as science writer Phil Ball discovered, even create mini-brains in a vat.
Contemplating the infinite is a time-tested way to shrink the present down to size. But if you think about it for very long, infinity can really mess with your mind. There’s something fundamentally paradoxical about it, and beautiful.
Albert Einstein shaped much of our understanding of the space-time continuum, but few know he had a deeply spiritual side. Einstein believed in both math and mysticism, and saw the human mind as a mirror of the infinite.
The Netflix documentary “A Trip to Infinity” is a wild ride, filled with animated shorts by artists from 11 different countries illustrating the concept of infinity and where to find it.
Michelle Thaller and Andrew Booth were a NASA space research power couple for 26 years. When Booth died of a rare brain cancer, Thaller turned to the universe for solace — finding comfort, meaning, and a new perspective in the infinite.
Infinity comes in different sizes. The idea of a world with more than one kind of infinity is glorious and also incomprehensible. Can you add, subtract and divide with infinity?
Most psychedelic stories are highly personal, but there’s a different dynamic when two people share the experience — especially a married couple. Steve talks with theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser and clinical psychologist Kari Gleiser.
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