Bret broke up with his long-term girlfriend. He’s lonely and cries more often than anyone knows. Stuck in a dark place, he picks up the phone and messages Anth. Anth isn’t a close friend, but Bret picked him over his dad, his brother, and his best friend is because Anth went through a brutal divorce last year. He knows what this pain feels like. Ellen has just been told she has breast cancer. The doctor, though young, is friendly and says all the right things, but she still wants to scream in...
Behind most every tech billionaire is a sci-fi novel they read as a teenager. For Bill Gates it was Stranger in a Strange Land, the 1960s epic detailing the culture clashes that arise when a Martian visits Earth. Google’s Sergey Brin has said it was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the cyberpunk classic about hackers and computer viruses set in an Orwellian Los Angeles. Jeff Bezos cites Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, which unreel in an utopian society of humanoids and artificial intelligences,...
There is a certain kind of story about nature and our place in it that says all we experience, all we feel, is nothing but neural circuity. According to one thought experiment, if I were a smart enough doctor or computer scientist, I could put your brain in a vat, hook it up to a bunch of electrodes that enable some kind of simulation of the world, and you’d never know the difference. Fed the proper electrical stimulus, your brain would conjure up the exact same experiences as if you were...
It was a long shot to trust the northern New England weather in early April, especially after a strange winter of warm spells followed by massive snowstorms. But hundreds of thousands of people gambled, or trusted their weather apps, and, as the atmospheric gods would have it, we were all in for a spectacular celestial treat. Clear blue skies, low humidity, great visibility. I drove for about 2.5 hours from Hanover to the north of New Hampshire with my two sons to an iconic mountain outcrop...
When it comes to the Universe, there are some things we can be confident are out there based on what we observe. We know that the Universe was hotter, denser, and more uniform in the distant past. We know that the stars and galaxies in the Universe have grown up and evolved as the Universe has aged. We know that gravitation has formed the large-scale structure in the Universe, and that structure has grown more complex over time. And we also know how much normal matter, altogether, is present in...
One thing you can be sure of, as you measure and observe the Universe around you, is this: the physical objects you see, touch, and otherwise interact with all occupy a volume of space. Whether in the form of solid, liquid, gas, or any other phase of matter, it costs energy in order to reduce the volume that any tangible material occupies, as though the very components of matter themselves are capable of resisting the impetus to occupy a smaller amount of three-dimensional space. And yet,...
At roughly 11:19 a.m. on April 20, 1999, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold emerged from their vehicles in the parking lots of Columbine High School. Clad in black trench coats, they started strolling toward the school entrance. Klebold lobbed a pipe bomb. Then the duo brandished guns and started shooting. Armed with a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol, two shotguns, a carbine, as well as dozens of pipe bombs and mounds of ammunition in a bag they were lugging, the two were out to...
Failing is cool at the moment. This is an era of reframing. A setback isn’t bad; it’s a learning experience. An obstacle shouldn’t bother you; it’s an opportunity to grow. If you’ve read any self-help article written in the last five years, you will often find, at some point, the idea that “failing is necessary for success.” There’s a cottage industry of celebrities and self-help personalities who lionize the great benefits of having to overcome. All will start with a similar refrain: “We live...
The quest to build a robust pipeline of high-potential leadership talent is increasingly urgent as the challenges facing organizations gain in complexity and speed. However, the current leadership gap illustrates how difficult that quest can be. One crucial question must be addressed at the outset: What differentiates high-potential leadership talent from high-performing professionals more generally? Both are essential to an organization’s success, but each brings unique capabilities. Too...
I have a friend at work; she’s kind of a friend, but only ever a “work friend.” We have lunch together and get along, but nothing more. Lately, she’s started to spend our lunch breaks ‘trauma dumping’ on me. I don’t mind venting or offloading, but this is more than that. It’s too much. It makes me feel uncomfortable, and I find I don’t want to eat with her anymore. Is she wrong to dump trauma on me?” — Lisa, London Friendships are complicated. In some ways, the term “friend” is such a...
Whenever we think about the Universe at a fundamental level, there’s always the temptation to wonder if reality might somehow be simpler than we perceive it to be. As complex and diverse as the natural world is, it’s humbling to recognize that everything we see, perceive, and interact with is made of the same building blocks. Matter is made of atoms, which are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons; protons and neutrons are further made of quarks and gluons. There are other particles as well:...
Paper is to news what vinyl is to music: an outdated medium decimated by its digital replacement. Except that vinyl records have finally found their niche, and sales are up again. Newspapers haven’t yet worked out how to deal with all the advertising money that has fled online, and are still in freefall. Compared to 20 years ago, there are now 3,000 fewer newspaper titles in the U.S. and 43,000 fewer newspaper journalists. Total newspaper circulation declined from more than 50 million in 2005 to...