Tina was at a crossroads. Her daughter had recently left for college, and her husband had his own pursuits. And although she’d once enjoyed banking, she now bore little interest in her work. For some time, she had been asking...

For 30 years Isabelle Arnulf, head of the sleep disorders clinic at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, has studied sleep and its associated disorders. During her career, Arnulf, who is also a professor of neurology at Sorbonne University in France, has...

Atomic clocks, combined with precise astronomical measurements, have revealed that the length of a day is suddenly getting longer, and scientists don’t know why. This has critical impacts not just on our timekeeping, but also things like GPS and other...

          About the Artist My name is Jo March and I’m a self-taught painter. I’ve been making some kind of living through my work since 1986, based in Cornwall, the county where I grew up. My...

In February 2015, a Scottish woman uploaded a photograph of a dress to the internet. Within 48 hours the blurry snapshot had gone viral, provoking spirited debate around the world. The disagreement centred on the dress’s colour: some people were...

The Hague, where I live, has 11km of gorgeous coastline with rolling dunes and sandy beaches. In summer, I often see locals in Scheveningen or Kijkduin (the city’s most famous beaches) sunbathing, strolling in nature or riding their bikes, then...

  Did you know that worrying is like a rocking chair? It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. Excessive worrying is exhausting and can become a great waste of time and energy. It puts your...

    Whether it’s based on hallucinatory beliefs or not, an artificial-intelligence gold rush has started over the last several months to mine the anticipated business opportunities from generative AI models like ChatGPT. App developers, venture-backed startups, and some of...

    Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that have made me cry: Any time I must chop, dice, or mince ingredients; a group of sea lions barking in the sun; sad music; receiving a free hot dog; the...

Since last fall, artificial intelligence — in particular ChatGPT and its recently unveiled successor, GPT-4 — has taken center stage in conversations about the future of business, work, and learning. ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer application in history — outpacing Instagram and...

Every once in a while I wonder how my life can get any better. And then it does! Over and over again. How is it that that can happen without much effort on my part to make it so? Here...

  Whilst researching my latest book, Food for Life, I learnt that we’re very short of practical advice on food choices which are the most important things we can do for our health (humans and our gut microbes) and also...

In modern times, clocks underpin everything people do, from work to school to sleep. Timekeeping is also the invisible structure that makes modern infrastructure work. It forms the foundation of the high-speed computers that conduct financial trading and even the...

Not getting enough sleep is detrimental to both your health and productivity. Yawn. We’ve heard it all before. But results from one study impress just how bad a cumulative lack of sleep can be on performance. Subjects in a lab-based...

  I’ve been watching for how greatness shows up lately. For example, how Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney sourced Wrexham AFC into super winners with such grace, generousity and community spirit, and how Iam Tongi is winning the hearts of...

  The human brain is often described in the language of tipping points: It toes a careful line between high and low activity, between dense and sparse networks, between order and disorder. Now, by analyzing firing patterns from a record...

In the summer of 2021, I experienced a cluster of coincidences, some of which had a distinctly supernatural feel. Here’s how it started. I keep a journal and record dreams if they are especially vivid or strange. It doesn’t happen...

I have come far in my life, farther than I ever dreamed was even possible. And yet my dreaming continues, urging me ever onward. I understand consciousness and how to innovate within it. I thrill to making up new future...