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Philosophy
The weird and wild ways mummy fever swept through Europe.
Unlike other world rulers, Genghis Khan was laid to rest not inside an elaborate mausoleum but an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia. Maybe.
Modern cosmology conjectures different possible fates for the Universe and thus for the end of time. Details depend on which model is right.
Success can be measured in different ways. When it hinges entirely on our careers, we fall victim to a devastating addiction.
Since at least 600 BC, people have been mesmerized by the concept of the infinite.
No matter how beautiful, elegant, or compelling your idea is, if it disagrees with observation and experiment, it's wrong.
A philosopher unpacks the paradox in using the word "evil."
Deaths of despair are skyrocketing in the U.S., while at the same time, they are falling in other wealthy countries. What are we doing wrong?
Pain makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. What's puzzling is why so many of us choose to seek out painful experiences.
John Templeton Foundation
Quite a lot, actually, even though it has no identifiable value as a scientific concept.
You can love a romantic partner, but also a pet, a book, God, or the sound of someone’s voice. We need many more words for love.
Brands manufacture meaning through consensus; people must strive to create their own.
Media provocateurs and conspiracy theorists insist that they're "just asking questions." No, they aren’t.
We tend to assume our view of the world is objective and accurate rather than subjective and biased — which is what it really is.
There are billions of potentially inhabited planets in the Milky Way alone. Here's how NASA will at last discover and measure them.
What Odysseus needed from his father was something more important: the comfort of being a son.
You've heard of Stephen Hawking. Ever heard of Renata Kallosh? Didn't think so.
John Templeton Foundation
An analogy explains the greater fool theory: You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away; you just have to run faster than the other guy.
With two different black hole event horizons now directly imaged, we can see that they are, in fact, rings, not disks. But why?
Any alien civilization that grows to span an entire planet would spark the same effects that we have. So, what do we do about it?
In New Zealand, ambitious Kiwis want to launch a lawn mowing business; in South Africa, it's cooking gas refills. Start-up dreams vary widely.
Technology will not save the world, and it is inherently neither good nor bad. But, when tech is coupled to human virtue, good will prevail.
The engineer working on Google's AI, called LaMDA, suffers from what we could call Michelangelo Syndrome. Scientists must beware hubris.
The sonnenrad is a Heathen symbol composed of 12 repeated runes.
A dispute marked by flags and booze has been replaced with an official land border.
An elaborate device called the Mechanical Turk defeated Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte at chess. Edgar Allan Poe revealed the hoax.
The answer to this question depends on how you define "freedom."
Prison is an unreliable method of punishment. Let's do better.
Science doesn't fit neatly into ideology.
John Templeton Foundation
In all of science, no figures have changed the world more than Einstein and Newton. Will anyone ever be as revolutionary again?