From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
When you put cells in the same vat and ask them to grow and they're producing ammonia, you're going to have a nice glass of urine! We must solve all of that!!
The theory describes only the way objects interact with one another, without indicating what happens between one interaction and the next one.
We are hard wired through our biology to understand: what there is, what to do about what there is, that there is a difference between knowing what there is and knowing what to do about what there is and what the difference is.
Every human being on the planet- genetically- is 99.9 percent identical. Of the remaining 0.1 percent, only 10-15% accounts for the differences we see between asserted 'races' of humans.
When do we have our best ideas? When we're in the shower… when we're on a long drive with a radio off… when we're on a hike. The research supports this too.
Most astronomers are surprised, but biologists look at the history of life on Earth. Many biologists I speak to would say it's almost incomprehensible that something as complex as us has even appeared at all—we might just be very lucky.
The question to be asked is why doesn't everybody fly?
Our body is a community of cells, in which each cell occupies a place appropriate for its tasks on behalf of the whole. Cancer cells, however, are rogues that trespass aggressively into other tissues. Metastasis is what makes cancer so lethal.
About 65% of the population mouth breathes at night. If you're breathing through your mouth for eight hours, you increase your susceptibility to respiratory illnesses, sleep apnea, snoring, and allergies. You get less oxygen and overwork your body.
Birds are not born with an innate genetically determined knowledge of constellations. What they do has been brilliantly shown in an experiment by Stephen Emlen.
Consciousness is the most troubling because it's so hard to deny its existence. With all these other tricky, troubling phenomena, it's at least an option to say maybe it doesn't exist, maybe we're not really free in the way we think we are. But with consciousness, it's seems hard to make sense of the idea that nobody's ever felt pain.
Although, today, the universe appears more bio-friendly than it ever was. That doesn't mean it is inhabited. We still have to prove that.