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Wall Street Journal's investigation Excerpt: "A tiny Pentagon office had spent months investigating conspiracy theories about secret Washington UFO programs when it uncovered a shocking truth: At least one of those theories had been fueled by the Pentagon itself.  The congressionally ordered probe took investigators back to the 1980s, when an Air Force colonel visited a bar near Area 51, a top-secret site in the Nevada desert. He gave the owner photos of what might be flying saucers. The photos went up on the walls, and into the local lore went the idea that the U.S. military was secretly testing recovered alien technology. But the colonel was on a mission—of disinformation. The photos were doctored, the now-retired officer confessed to the Pentagon investigators in 2023. The whole exercise was a ruse to protect what was really going on at Area 51: The Air Force was using the site to develop top-secret stealth fighters, viewed as a critical edge against the Soviet Union. Military leaders were worried that the programs might get exposed if locals somehow glimpsed a test flight of, say, the F-117 stealth fighter, an aircraft that truly did look out of this world. Better that they believe it came from Andromeda. This episode, reported now for the first time, was just one of a series of discoveries the Pentagon team made as it investigated decades of claims that Washington was hiding what it knew about extraterrestrial life. That effort culminated in a report, released last year by the Defense Department , that found allegations of a government coverup to be baseless. In fact, a Wall Street Journal investigation reveals, the report itself amounted to a coverup—but not in the way the UFO conspiracy industry would have people believe. The public disclosure left out the truth behind some of the foundational myths about UFOs: The Pentagon itself sometimes deliberately fanned the flames, in what amounted to the U.S. government targeting its own citizens with disinformation. At the same time, the very nature of Pentagon operations—an opaque bureaucracy that kept secret programs embedded within secret programs, cloaked in cover stories—created fertile ground for the myths to spread."

Physicist and author Sabine Hossenfelder discusses the physics of dead grandmothers. Description: Sabine Hossenfelder investigates life's big questions through the lens of physics, particularly Einstein's theory of special relativity. She highlights the relativity of simultaneity, which states that the notion of "now" is subjective and dependent on the observer. This leads to the block universe concept, where past, present, and future all exist simultaneously, making the past just as real as the present.

Professor and political scientist Brian Klaas dives into the deep waters of chaos theory. (video) Description: Could the tiniest ripple in time alter the future of our universe? Can the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings really cause a hurricane? Professor and political scientist Brian Klaas dives into the deep waters of chaos theory. From the myth of total control to the limits of predictability, Brian Klaas traces how the butterfly effect challenges the illusion of individual agency.

One opinion Excerpt: "Let us assume that physicians, especially PCPs, are provided with all the additional information everyone thinks they should have and that they have all the time necessary to impart this information, as needed, to every patient they treat. Would this result in the joint patient-provider decision-making touted as the “gold standard” of medical care? Likely not! To receive information, a patient must be both motivated and capable of learning, and far too often, they are neither. How frequently has a patient been prepared to take notes or asked to borrow a pen and paper to do this? It frustrates me when experts and organizations preach this ideal but always fault the physician if the relationship falls short of this goal. However, a joint activity requires that both parties share equal responsibility for it to function effectively. Through observing patient-clinician interactions, I have found that the patient half of the dyad is frequently deficient, rather than the physician! As I have written, at least half of the patients queried prefer their physicians to make decisions on their behalf and not be involved in the medical aspects of their care. Those who wish to make decisions may be unable to participate due to limited literacy (at or below the eighth-grade level), diminished motivation resulting from prior experiences, an inability to reason rationally and neutrally, or a combination of these factors."

How to make the most of it Excerpt: ' “It’s not true that no one needs you anymore.” These words came from an elderly woman sitting behind me on a late-night flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The plane was dark and quiet. A man I assumed to be her husband murmured almost inaudibly in response, something to the effect of “I wish I was dead.” Again, the woman: “Oh, stop saying that.” I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but couldn’t help it. I listened with morbid fascination, forming an image of the man in my head as they talked. I imagined someone who had worked hard all his life in relative obscurity, someone with unfulfilled dreams—perhaps of the degree he never attained, the career he never pursued, the company he never started. At the end of the flight, as the lights switched on, I finally got a look at the desolate man. I was shocked. I recognized him—he was, and still is, world-famous. Then in his mid‑80s, he was beloved as a hero for his courage, patriotism, and accomplishments many decades ago. As he walked up the aisle of the plane behind me, other passengers greeted him with veneration. Standing at the door of the cockpit, the pilot stopped him and said, “Sir, I have admired you since I was a little boy.” The older man—apparently wishing for death just a few minutes earlier—beamed with pride at the recognition of his past glories. For selfish reasons, I couldn’t get the cognitive dissonance of that scene out of my mind. It was the summer of 2015, shortly after my 51st birthday. I was not world-famous like the man on the plane, but my professional life was going very well. I was the president of a flourishing Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. I had written some best-selling books. People came to my speeches. My columns were published in The New York Times. But I had started to wonder: Can I really keep this going? I work like a maniac. But even if I stayed at it 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at some point my career would slow and stop. And when it did, what then? Would I one day be looking back wistfully and wishing I were dead? Was there anything I could do, starting now, to give myself a shot at avoiding misery—and maybe even achieve happiness—when the music inevitably stops? ... D ecline is inevitable, and it occurs earlier than almost any of us wants to believe. But misery is not inevitable. Accepting the natural cadence of our abilities sets up the possibility of transcendence, because it allows the shifting of attention to higher spiritual and life priorities. But such a shift demands more than mere platitudes. I embarked on my research with the goal of producing a tangible road map to guide me during the remaining years of my life. This has yielded four specific commitments."

"Mattering" might be the most powerful motivator of all. KEY POINTS "Mattering" combines feeling valued and knowing your value. Small acts fostering mattering can boost engagement, innovation, and retention. Leaders can excel by observing, noting, and sharing team members' contributions. Excerpt: After I finished my first year of law school, I clerked for a judge during the summer. I felt nervous about the experience and constantly wondered whether I had what it took to practice law. As the summer progressed, the judge gave me a complicated research project that I fumbled my way through and eventually submitted. Several days later, I found a note on my chair that said this: “Your report was excellent. I appreciated how you summarized the key takeaways—it made my life easier. Thanks. – Judge.” It was as though his words were magic and unlocked something that I have remembered almost 20 years later. I still have his note in my office. Why? That magical feeling from something as simple as a 20-word note has a name—it’s mattering —and it’s the subject of Dr. Zach Mercurio’s new book, The Power of Mattering . I first discovered Zach and his work while I was researching my own book. I had the pleasure of interviewing him about his work because I identified that mattering was an important driver of high-performing and thriving team cultures. Mattering has two parts. The first part is feeling valued (appreciation and recognition) and the second part is knowing that you add value (achievement). He explains that mattering is created through small, repeated interactions that help people feel: Noticed: seeing and hearing other people. Affirmed: showing people how their unique strengths make a difference. Needed: showing people how they are relied upon. This work comes at an important time. Gallup recently reported that employee engagement in the U.S. dropped to a 10-year low and globally, both employee engagement and well-being have dropped in the past year, with engagement falling for only the second time since 2009. Managers are experiencing the sharpest decline. In addition, burnout continues to be a problem across industries, and one survey of more than 4,000 workers found that 82% of the respondents have felt lonely at work.

Just a few hours of therapy-like interventions can reduce teen (and adult?) anxiety. Excerpt: "The strange little PowerPoint asks me to imagine being the new kid at school. I feel nervous and excluded, its instructions tell me. Kids pick on me. Sometimes I think I’ll never make friends. Then the voice of a young, male narrator cuts in. “By acting differently, you can actually build new connections between neurons in your brain,” the voice reassures me. “People aren’t stuck being shy, sad, or left out.” The activity, called Project Personality, is a brief digital activity meant to build a feeling of control over anxiety in 12-to-15-year-olds. Consisting of a series of stories, writing exercises, and brief explainers about neuroscience, it was created by Jessica Schleider, an assistant professor at Stony Brook University, where she directs the Lab for Scalable Mental Health . She sent it to me so I could see how teens might use it to essentially perform psychotherapy on themselves, without the aid of a therapist. In the middle of my new-kid scenario, the program tells me the story of Phineas Gage, the 19th-century railroad worker whose behavior changed radically after a metal spike was driven through his skull. With white backgrounds and rudimentary drawings, the program uses Gage’s experience to suggest that personality resides at least partly in the brain. If a metal spike can change your disposition, Project Personality reasons, so can something less violent—such as a shift in your mind-set. There are, perhaps, better ways to illustrate this than an extreme and hotly disputed historical event, but Project Personality finds a way to make it uplifting: “By learning new ways of thinking, each of us can grow into the type of person we want to be.” Toward the end, the activity asks me to reassure a friend who was snubbed by another friend in high school. What would I tell the friend about how people can change? It encourages me to apply what I just learned about personality and the brain. The total program takes me less than an hour to complete. Schleider admits that the production values are a little rudimentary; she’s currently working on a slicker version. Still, last year, she and her colleague John Weisz found that a single session with a very similar program helped reduce depression and anxiety among 96 young people ages 12 to 15. Beyond digital programs such as Project Personality, Schleider’s lab is about to test how well a single session of in-person psychotherapy can help teens and adults. The session will focus on “taking one step toward solving a problem that’s very troublesome,” she told me. “People will leave with a concrete plan for how to cope.”'

Listen to explore what creativity is, how it works, and how we can use it in unexpected ways Description of the audio file: When we think of creativity, we usually think of the arts — the ability to compose a song, write a novel, express ourselves through painting, dance, or theater. It’s the mysterious spark that ignites our imaginations, allowing us to communicate and experience emotions, ideas, and worlds that we could otherwise never touch. But creative thinking isn’t just limited to artists and their work. Increasingly, researchers are discovering that it plays a key role in human intelligence, problem-solving, and even our well-being. On this episode, we explore what creativity is, how it works, and how we can use it in unexpected ways. We hear about why one musician says AI programs aren’t a threat, but a means of democratizing music; what research has revealed about the power of creativity to shape the brains and success of children; and how the burgeoning field of “design thinking” is helping to improve our health care system.

Our attempts to establish scientific proof can harden into dogma. The target of ‘statistical significance’ leads some to massage data. Excerpt: "Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence read: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable . . . ” It was supposedly Benjamin Franklin who suggested instead announcing the truths to be “self-evident,” as though they were fundamental mathematical axioms providing an incontestable foundation for the new republic. The idea of self-evident truths goes all the way back to Euclid’s “Elements” (ca. 300 B.C.), which depends on a handful of axioms—things that must be granted true at the outset, such as that one can draw a straight line between any two points on a plane. From such assumptions Euclid went on to show, for example, that there are infinitely many prime numbers, and that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal. If the axioms are true, and the subsequent reasoning is sound, then the conclusion is irrefutable. What we now have is a proof: something we can know for sure. Adam Kucharski, a professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, takes the reader on a fascinating tour of the history of what has counted as proof. Today, for example, we have computerized proofs by exhaustion, in which machines chew through examples so numerous that they could never be checked by humans. The author sketches the development of ever-more-rarefied mathematics, from calculus to the mind-bending work on different kinds of infinity by the Russian-German sage Georg Cantor, who proved that natural integers (1,2,3 . . . ) are somehow not more numerous than even numbers (2,4,6 . . .), even though the former set includes all the elements of the latter set, in addition to the one that contains all odd numbers. My favorite example is the Banach-Tarski paradox, which proves that you can disassemble a single sphere and reconstitute it into two spheres of identical size. Climbing the ladder of proof, we can enter a wild realm where intuitions break down completely. But proof, strictly understood, is only half the story here. Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Kucharski relates, taught himself to derive Euclid’s proofs to give himself an argumentative edge in the courtroom and in Congress. Yet politics is messier than geometry; and so the dream of perfectly logical policymaking, immune to quibble, remains out of reach. What should we do, then, when a mathematical proof of truth is unavailable, but we must nonetheless act?

Reminding us of the importance of love and friendship Excerpt: " Normally classified as a philosopher of ethics, MacIntyre was a fierce critic of modern ethical theory. His writings drew deeply from a wide array of fields, including theology, social science, psychology, history and literature, but he never pursued a doctorate. Born in Glasgow, he received master’s degrees from Manchester and Oxford, later telling a student: “I won’t go so far as to say that you have a deformed mind if you a Ph.D., but you will have to work extra hard to remain educated.” In his most famous work, “After Virtue” (1981), MacIntyre contended that moral discourse in the 20th century had become fragmented and largely meaningless, an outcome he believed inevitable given modernity’s rejection of “any view of man as having an essence which defines his true end.” The dominant forms of moral theory, such as Immanuel Kant’s deontology and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, fail, MacIntyre believed, because they treat mankind only as it happens to be, rather than as it ought to be, in light of our human ends. “After Virtue” confronts its reader with the choice of Nietzsche or Aristotle—an embrace of postmodern amoralism or a return to a tradition of the virtues. MacIntyre expressed sharp differences with standard approaches to technology, business and medical ethics. “Applied ethics is not only based upon a mistake, but upon one that has proved to be harmfully influential,” he wrote in a 1984 paper. The mistake was to think of morality as an abstract, reductive concept, a “view from nowhere,” instead of what it is: embodied in shared behaviors, embedded in traditions and reflected in practices and social forms."

How we handle grief largely depends on our worldview. Here is how three famous philosophers handled the certainty of grief and despair. KEY TAKEAWAYS The deep and visceral despair that comes from grief can be a transformative moment in our lives. While we all know, intellectually, that things die, those who have experienced grief first-hand experience the world in a different way. Philosophers have responded to the idea of death in different ways. Kierkegaard saw it as a door to faith, Heidegger as a way to give meaning to life, and Camus the absurdity of it all. Another opinion

There is no future where young people are able to thrive without embracing AI technology. Pope Francis’ leadership on artificial intelligence makes sense, as the Catholic Church, and religion overall, offers time-tested wisdom on some of life’s deepest moral and philosophical questions. A moral approach to work and AI includes treating workers with dignity, paying them fairly, and developing ways that AI can promote human capabilities and productivity.