Judith Viorst looks at ways older adults make meaning in their life and what younger people can learn from them

Revisiting the year’s noteworthy nonfiction.

Good day to you! I seek to continue on our recent brief conversation on the merits of curvilinear thinking : How might we we cognitively consider motion, as both: within our local-umwelt of experience, within our existing or better paradigms of space and time, or cause and effect. and our meta-umwelt observations at cosmic level via our "advanced" prosthetics of umwelts, in which we observe motion appearing to indicate EXPANSION, AND ACCELERATING, AND DOING SO FROM EVERY DIS

In this week's Big Think Class, Wharton professor Adam Grant shares how to give feedback that will actually help others reach their full potential.

After the Oct. 7 attacks, campus groups pressured trustees to adopt policies enforcing ‘institutional neutrality’. But it is an elusive and illusory goal. Somewhat related

DM How do you define curvilinear? Curvilinear  refers to anything that consists of, is bounded by, or characterized by curved lines rather than straight ones. The term combines the Latin roots curvus  (meaning "bent" or "curved") and linea  (meaning "line"). The concept appears across several domains, each with slightly different emphases: In geometry and mathematics , curvilinear describes shapes, paths, or coordinate systems based on curves. For instance, curvilinear motion

Five hundred years later, the legacy of Christopher Columbus remains unsettled.

This documentary focuses on the propaganda surrounding the development and deployment of the atomic bomb and the journalism that sought to cut through it, with lessons for our own age of ascendant AI. Excerpt: " But it’s also a cautionary tale. “It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge,” said President Harry S. Truman. That is something “Bombshell” establishes wasn’t true in

Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive. Excerpt : "If we want to keep reading from going extinct, then the best thing we could do is tell young people what so many great writers readily admit: Literature doesn’t make you a better citizen or a more successful person. A passion for reading can even make life more difficult. And you don’t cultivate a passion for the sake of democracy. You d

Don't forget to drink and reflect at "Hidden Brain" regularly Other noteworthy podcasts you might want to sample

THE BOOKS THAT MADE US THINK THE MOST THIS YEAR

Futurists disagree over how much the future lends itself to control and foreknowledge. Many focus too much on the grandiose. Excerpt: " If futurists really want to help everyday people, perhaps their goal should be to help us deal with our anxiety about the future rather than to simply predict what will happen. From this perspective, the most valuable section in Mr. Foster’s book recounts his first trip in a self-driving taxi. Mr. Foster was initially awestruck, but he soon f

When the screens are out of the way, kids are back to being kids—without the temptation to zone out electronically

Anti-science mysticism is enabling autocracy around the globe. Related

Wharton’s Scott Snyder and co-author Jason Hreha offer five strategies to bridge the gap between leadership expectations around AI and meaningful transformation. Only 5 of 37 enterprise pilots are getting to production on average and only 3 of these are creating real impact .  KEY TAKEAWAYS Employee hesitation and lack of training hinder AI adoption. AI adoption relies on motivation, ability, and prompts, with a focus on training, incentives, and a supportive culture to overc

You can learn about media by parodying it from the print era into the digital age.

With waiting lists in the thousands, the state’s vo-tech campuses are highly sought after, even attracting college-bound students

Open-ended learning environments (OELEs) are educational settings that encourage students to explore, experiment, and construct their own understanding of STEM concepts. While OELEs can increase engagement and deepen learning, they can be challenging for novice learners who may lack the self-regulated learning (SRL) skills needed to manage their own learning effectively. Recent research highlights the importance of students’ emotions (affective states) and thinking processes

As reinvention pressure rises, leaders need to rewire their decision-making .

Teachers are generally much more concerned about doing right by their students than they are about angering parents and community members.