Witnessing the beauty of synchronous fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains inspired author Leigh Ann Henion to turn off her porch light and discover the vast natural world that thrives in the darkness.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Science
Journalist Zoë Schlanger has been tracking the new science of plant intelligence. Plants can exhibit some of the same behaviors as animals with nervous systems, including decision-making and elaborate defenses against predators.
Have you ever wondered how plants find enough light and water? How they ward off attacks from predators? It turns out they’re a lot smarter than you realize. Plants can send out distress signals. They have memories. They may even be able to see.
Suzanne Simard transformed our understanding of forest ecology by uncovering the fungal networks that trees use to communicate with each other. Anne Strainchamps went walking with Simard to see firsthand how a forest is like a kinship network.
There’s a huge question swirling around the really big psychedelic experiences. Are these mind-blowing trips just hallucinations – the brain shot full of chemicals, playing tricks on you - or do they crack open some transpersonaldimension of consciousness? Most scholars who study...
Are the really big psychedelic experiences just hallucinations, or do they crack open some transpersonal dimension of consciousness? Philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes believes we need a metaphysics of psychedelics to explain these experiences.
Every click on your computer, every swipe on your smartphone, leaves a data trail. Do you care? Would owning your data, or having more digital privacy, make life better? And what happens to all that data when you die?
Before the era of data mining, scientists in the 1960s began a first-of-its kind study of personality—by secretly studying a group of preschoolers. Former test subject Susannah Breslin uncovers the buried secrets of that study.
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