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Did Jim Carrey really work with a CIA trainer to play the Grinch? How the actor endured the hellish role
While filming 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas,' Jim Carrey worked with a CIA trainer versed in torture endurance. Here's the full story, including the tactics he used to survive his long hours in the makeup chair.
Pokémon GO Events This Week: December 22 to December 28, 2025
Pokémon GO’s December 22 to December 28 week has us settled into the the new season of Precious Paths! Enjoy a holiday themed week with the Winter Holiday Part 1, Winter Holiday Part 2 and the Winter Weekend! Plus the weekly rotating Spotlight and Raid Hours, Dynamax Battles and Mega Raids. ⭐Highlights Raid Boss Change […]
Clair Obscur Is Having Its Indie Game Game Of The Year Award Stripped Away Due To AI Use
The Indie Game Awards presented the award last night, only to strip it hours later.
ENTERTAINMENT: Museum sets sessions for kids; Steinway honors piano teacher
The Rogers Historical Museum and the Rogers Public Library are offering "Museum and Me," an hour-long, free, once-a-month program at the museum for children 3-5 that helps foster interest in history, reading and museums.
Clarksville Area YMCA hosts Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours
Clarksville Area YMCA hosted the Clarksville Area Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours event on Thursday.
Glowing neurons let scientists watch the brain work in real time
A new bioluminescent tool allows neurons to glow on their own, letting scientists track brain activity without harmful lasers or fading signals. The advance makes it possible to watch individual brain cells fire for hours, offering a clearer, deeper look at how the brain works.
I'm 87 and earn $12 an hour working two jobs. I wish I were retired, but I have no choice but to work.
Rebecca Reed, 87, is still working out of necessity. She earns $12 an hour as a church secretary and an editorial assistant in New Orleans.
The Politics Hour: The year in local politics and what's ahead in 2026
New Prince George's County Council Chair Krystal Oriadha talks budget priorities, public safety, and data centers. Plus, WAMU's politics reporters breaks down the year's top stories and what to watch for in 2026.
The Politics Hour: The year in local politics and what's ahead in 2026
New Prince George's County Council Chair Krystal Oriadha talks budget priorities, public safety, and data centers. Plus, WAMU's politics reporters breaks down the year's top stories and what to watch for in 2026.
Hawaii's minimum wage increases to $16 per hour in 2026
A $2 boost from the current rate
NYC ‘science of reading’ initiative: How a Staten Island school is leading the way
A 10-hour course for educators creates a common language for teaching phonemic awareness across all grade levels.
'Fallout' is bleak but funny science fission : Pop Culture Happy Hour
Fallout is based on a hugely successful video game series known for blending a sardonic, very dark comedic sensibility, and violence. The series is set in the game's post-apocalyptic world – an America divided into factions wrestling for control of an irradiated wasteland. When the hopeful Lucy (Ella Purnell) steps out of the comfortable life she's known in an underground vault, the world she's confronted with is harsh, brutal, merciless – and kinda funny. Fallout just returned for a second season on Prime Video, so today we’re revisiting our conversation about the show.
'I'm pissed': Speaker removes two bipartisan provisions from defense policy bill
House Speaker Mike Johnson removed the provisions at the 11th hour
Trilith entertainment zone, ‘next-generation’ cinema near grand opening
Following years of design tweaks and construction, the full scope of a public-accessible Trilith project described as a new metro Atlanta epicenter for arts, culture, and entertainment is just weeks from its world premiere. Officials with Trilith LIVE, the entertainment and special events component of the massive New Urbanism project a half-hour south of Atlanta, today announced their grand opening season will officially kick off Jan. 15.
Office Hours: Computer Science Professor and Researcher Sam Siewert
From a curious kid in Berkeley to a NASA engineer, Sam Siewert’s lifelong fascination with how things work now fuels his teaching at Chico State.
Senate health care talks flicker to life as ObamaCare deadline nears
A bipartisan group of senators is making a renewed push toward finding a health care solution as the hour-glass winds down to the end-of-month deadline to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act (A…
The wrong pillow can wreck your sleep. Science can help you find the right one.
Your pillow is one of the most powerful tools to help you fall asleep, stay asleep—and even ease your pain and improve posture during waking hours.
Gavin Newsom hires former CDC officials to work as public health consultants for state of California
Susan Monarez was fired as the CDC’s director and Dr. Debra Houry resigned as the agency’s chief medical officer and deputy director.
An 11th-hour decision to back out of Miami mental health center? That’s a mistake
Fiscal responsibility is good, but the timing here is odd. | Opinion
Rob Reiner's daughter found parents dead in their home 5 hours before her brother was arrested for murder
Five hours before her brother, Nick, was arrested in connection with their deaths, Romy Reiner found her parents — Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner — dead in their home.
Commentary: Trump’s callous political attack on Rob Reiner shows a shameful moral failure
Hours after Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered, President Trump blamed the beloved Hollywood figure for his own death. It's a new low, but also shows just how right Reiner was.
Stalker 2 is adding "hours" of new quests in a major free update coming very, very soon
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl 2 is getting a free update promising "hours" of new quests very soon.
How Jasmine Crockett, chaotic end to candidate filing period changed North Texas politics
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett's eleventh hour decision to run for Senate highlighted a chaotic end to the candidate filing period for the March 3 primaries. It...
I'm 84 and work late nights from my wheelchair. I can't comfortably retire, and I intend to work until my 100th birthday.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jane Way, 84, who works 30 hours a week as a US-based accountant for a South African orphanage.
Strange, 7-hour explosion from deep space is unlike anything scientists have seen — Space photo of the week
Astronomers used major telescopes across the world to probe a cosmic explosion 8 billion light-years from the solar system.
A Car Designer From A Top Brand Used AI To Create This Lexus EV In 24 Hours
A professional car designer turned two simple sketches into a Lexus EV concept in 24 hours using only AI
Teen’s video a ‘Breakthrough’ in science communication
Seventeen-year-old Grace Lee from Chula Vista is gaining national attention as a finalist in the global Breakthrough Junior Challenge, an annual competition that invites students to create original videos explaining complex scientific ideas in creative and engaging ways. Founded in 2015, the contest encourages young people to break down advanced scientific theories using imagination and storytelling— “Steven Spielberg meets Albert Einstein,” as organizers describe it. Lee’s submission centers on the principle of least time in physics, a concept that explains why light always travels the path that takes the least amount of time. To bring the idea to life, she used intricate origami characters and stop-motion animation, along with simple at-home experiments, she said. “The fact that light always travels via the path that takes the least amount of time sounds simple at first, but nature is full of surprises,” she said. “This principle is actually very profound and underlies many different fields in physics that seem completely unrelated, from optics to Newton’s laws to Einstein’s theory of relativity.” Also, origami has long been one of her passions and integrating it into her project felt natural. She often makes origami gifts for friends and teaches origami in her school clubs. “A single 10-second scene would take hours to craft,” she said, noting the mixture of stop-motion and post-production editing required to animate expressions and movement. To ensure the science remained accurate and accessible, she spent time reading books and online resources, writing a script, creating a storyboard, and filming and editing repeatedly until the visuals worked.The experiments were among the biggest challenges. To demonstrate water waves, she used everyday household items — “a spatula and an electric toothbrush to vibrate the waves, glass in a baking pan for different depths, and an iPhone flashlight so the waves would be visible.” She also put careful thought into explaining the principle through analogies, including a gingerbread man and a fox. “Analogies and visuals are incredibly important,” she said. “Visual demonstrations allow viewers to see how the science actually works.” Beyond the competition, Lee is deeply involved in science leadership and advocacy. She serves as International President of miRcore, the world’s largest student computational biology organization, with 136 chapters across five countries. She leads a 20-member executive board, organizes outreach connecting schools worldwide, and has helped run workshops at locations including Scripps Research Institute and the University of Michigan. “I used to be intimidated,” she said, but she gradually grew her skills and confidence. “Now I am no longer afraid to use my voice and enthusiasm to bring out the best in others.” Her research experience includes two peer-reviewed papers on asthma and vaping. Misconceptions around vaping, she said, show why clear science communication matters. “Our research shows that there is long-term harm to your lungs on the cellular level that isn’t obvious unless you come down with an illness like the flu,” she said. Lee also founded Full Hearts at Eastlake High School, transforming the small club into one of the school’s largest, with hands-on service projects in partnership with local nonprofits. She continues mentoring younger students to sustain the mission. If she wins the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, Grace hopes the $100,000 science lab prize for her school will expand opportunities for students who have limited access to equipment and hands-on science outside the classroom.
EXCLUSIVE: Inside Trump’s private schedule as media fixates on his health
Fox News obtained President Donald Trump's December schedule revealing back-to-back meetings and calls extending into evening hours throughout the month.
Analysis: 24 hours that showed the limits of Trump’s power
The Indiana state Senate’s vote against a new congressional map that President Donald Trump had pressured it to adopt was one of the most extraordinary examples to date of Republicans standing up to Trump.
NFC playoff standings, Philadelphia Eagles' rooting guide for Week 15
With the Sunday and Monday night Week 15 games set to begin in just hours, here is who fans should root for with the Eagles looking to move back into the No. 1 seed
The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror
Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds; Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle; All Tomorrows by CM Kosemen; The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson; The Witching Hour by various authors
An AI agent spent 16 hours hacking Stanford's network. It outperformed human pros for much less than their six-figure salaries.
An AI agent hacked Stanford's network for 16 hours and outperformed human pros, all while costing far less than their six-figure pay.
The Witness and Braid Creator Jonathan Blow Announces New 250-Hour Puzzle Game, Order of the Sinking Star | The Game Awards 2025
Order of the Sinking Star is an upcoming puzzle game that features 1,000 puzzles that can take up to 500 hours to complete, and we saw it in a live demo.
'We're not just going to want to be fed AI slop for 16 hours a day': Analyst sees Disney/OpenAI deal as a dividing line in entertainment history
"I think the reason this bidding is approaching $100 billion-plus is the content library and the potential to do a Disney-OpenAI type of deal."
The Politics Hour: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on the District's future
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on her decision to not run again, her tenure, and who might be the city's next police chief.
Peers told they risk ‘constitutional crisis’ after surprise vote to continue blocking employment rights bill
Government lost Lords vote on employment rights bill by 24 votes, just hours after the creation of 25 new Labour peers
Shasta County HHSA speaks on fog and connection to daylight, seasonal affective disorder
Makaylah Fazzari with Shasta County HHSA explained how fog can limit daylight hours, which may contribute to certain conditions.
How does lack of sunlight affect our mental health?
Dr. Alice Connors-Kellgren of Tufts Medical Center discusses the importance of getting daily sunlight and what you can do during winter's short daylight hours.
Google says Gemini for Home is now rolling out 'within 24 hours' on smart speakers and displays
After kicking off the rollout a few weeks ago, Google says the Gemini for Home replacement of Assistant on smart...
Google Maps Quietly Added This Long-Overdue Feature for Drivers
Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you. Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once you start driving again. Saving your parking spot in Maps isn't a new ability in itself.
3 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for December 2025 Leaked Early
Just hours before the announcement
PlayStation's 2025 Wrap-Up is here, so you can see how many hours you've sunk into Death Stranding 2
Sony just unveiled the PlayStation 2025 Wrap-Up. This provides players with a digital card that chronicles their favorite games and genres from the year.
Sheinelle Jones named co-host for the fourth hour of 'Today'
Jones will join Jenna Bush for program formerly co-hosted by Hoda Kotb
Pebble's founder introduces a $75 AI smart ring for recording brief notes with a press of a button
After rebooting the Pebble smartwatch, founder Eric Migicovsky is expanding his company's device lineup with a new smart wearable: an AI-powered smart ring known as Index 01. Named for the finger where the ring is meant to be worn, the new $75 ring is not meant to be a competitor to the always-on, always-listening AI devices, like the AI pendant Friend, but instead offers a way to record quick notes and reminders with a press of a button on the ring's side. AI only comes into play via the open source, speech-to-text, and AI models that run locally on your smartphone, via the open source Pebble mobile app. That is, if the Ring's button is not being pressed, it's not recording. (And this is a press-and-hold gesture, too, which means you can't start the ring's recording and then let go to surreptitiously record a conversation.) You can wear the stainless steel ring while in the shower, washing hands, doing dishes, or in the rain, but you would have to take it off for other water-related activities, like swimming. At launch, it's water-resistant to 1 meter. The ring is also not a fitness tracker or sleep monitor. It doesn't record details about your heart rate or health. And it's not there to be your AI friend. "I'm not trying to build some AI assistant thing," Migicovsky told TechCrunch in an interview. "I build things that solve one main problem, and they solve it really well," he explains. "I think of as external memory for my brain...that's what this is. It's always with you." Plus, the ring has been designed to be highly reliable and privacy-preserving, he says, as all your thoughts are stored on your phone, not in the cloud. There is no subscription. Migicovsky has been wearing the ring for three months now and says he cannot imagine going back to a world where he doesn't always have a memory device with him. "The problem is that, during the day, I get ideas or I remember something, and if I don't write it down that second, I forget it," he says. The ring solves this problem, he adds, without becoming another device you need to charge. "The battery lasts for years," Migicovsky claims. Technically, the ring is said to support roughly 12 to 14 hours of recording. On average, the founder says he uses it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. At that rate, he'll get about two years of usage. When the ring's battery dies, you can ship it back to the company for recycling. When using Index, you can record up to five minutes of audio, which can be saved to the ring and synced to your phone later. This makes sense for recording briefer, personal thoughts and notes, even when you don't have your phone handy, but it wouldn't work for recording a longer chat, like a presentation, meeting, or in-person interview of some kind. The ring also supports 99+ languages and has a bit of on-device memory, in case you're not in Bluetooth range of your device, where the recording is ultimately saved and transcribed. (The raw audio is retained, too, in case the speech-to-text is garbled due to loud background noise). If you own a Pebble smartwatch or one from another brand, your recorded thought can even appear on the watch's screen so you can verify it's correct. The ring works with Pebble's mobile app, which offers notes and reminders, but can optionally integrate with your phone's calendaring system, too, or other apps, like Notion. And the ring's software is open source, which makes it hackable by the community, the founder points out. Because of its open nature, the ring's button is already programmable. In addition to the press-and-hold gesture, you can program the ring to do other things with a single or double press, like play or pause your music or control the shutter on your phone's camera. You could use it to send a message through the universal chat app Beeper, which Migicovsky also created, or you could add your own voice actions via MCP. A new approach to hardware Migicovsky acknowledges that hardware can be difficult to get right -- as the previous exit of Pebble to Fitbit showed. (Fitbit, too, was later acquired by Google in 2021). "I didn't earn any money during Pebble -- we exited, but it was not a great exit," Migicovsky admits. This year, however, he decided to reboot the Pebble project after Google open sourced the PebbleOS, which opened up the door to new hardware. With his new company, Core Devices, Migicovsky plans to do things differently. Still, the founder doesn't regret his previous choices, he clarifies. "I wouldn't have gone back and changed anything. I loved what we built. I loved what we did. I love the company that we built, but it's not the only way to build a company," he told TechCrunch. " And, speaking as an ex-YC partner, there are -- there's a time and a place for building a venture-backed startup. Some companies are phenomenal when they raise money and build a big team, and I tried that...I think what I'm doing now is trying an alternative path, which is start from profitability," he says. The new company is a small team of five, self-funded, and focused on sustainability. So far, Core Devices has shipped the Pebble 2 Duo smartwatch with a black-and-white display. Its first run sold out, and the company is now preparing to ship the upgraded version, the Pebble Time 2. The newer device, which has seen 25,000 pre-orders, is a stainless steel watch with a larger, color e-ink screen. As for the Index 01, the ring's pre-order offer ends in March 2026. After that, the price increases to $99. It currently comes in silver, polished gold, and matte black and works with iOS and Android devices. Customers can select from eight ring sizes and three colors.
PlayStation 2025 Wrap-Up: See How Much You Played This Year
How many hours did you spend playing games this year?
Greenville City Council approves downtown entertainment district, honors Mayor White’s 30-year tenure
Greenville City Council unanimously approved a new downtown entertainment district Monday night, limiting operating hours for future businesses in an effort to improve public safety following late-night incidents that gained social media attention.
WAMU's Week Ahead: Reporter roundtable on data centers, Bowser on 'The Politics Hour', the region's best ice skating
This week WAMU will be taking a region-wide look at critical issues surrounding data centers, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser will be our guest on The Politics Hour, and a guide to top ice skating spots this winter.
Pokémon GO Events This Week: December 8 to December 14, 2025
Pokémon GO’s December 8 to December 14 week brings with it the first full week of the new season of Precious Paths! Enjoy a busy week with the Well Armed Event, and Gigantamax Snorlax Max Battle Day! Plus the weekly rotating Spotlight and Raid Hours, Dynamax Battles and Mega Raids. Highlights Raid Boss Change (December […]
Are you sleeping too much? New research reveals how many hours adults really need for brain health | - The Times of India
New research reveals the ideal sleep duration for optimal brain health, suggesting that both too little and too much sleep can lead to cognitive decline. Explore the findings from recent studies and understand how sleep quality influences brain function.
I joined a company with an AI mandate. I was daunted at first, but I've saved hours by solving a big, boring problem.
When Komal Amin got a job at a company with an established AI mandate, she felt intimidated. Now, she uses it for everything from sending invoices to planning dates.
Stop Charging Your Android Watch Daily. Here Are 7 Tips for Longer Battery Life
From Samsung's Galaxy Watch to Google's Pixel Watch and other Wear OS models, these settings can add hours of extra battery life for sleep and fitness tracking.
I Spent *Hours* Scrolling TikTok To Find These 29 Elite Gifts So You Don’t Have To
Get the trendiest gifts without ever having to pick up your phone.
New 'physics shortcut' lets laptops tackle quantum problems once reserved for supercomputers and AI
Physicists have transformed a decades-old technique for simplifying quantum equations into a reusable, user-friendly "conversion table" that works on a laptop and returns results within hours.
To watch or not to watch the big game
Show some grace to those who can’t stomach two or three hours of tension — there’s some good research backing up their hesitance.
Discord launches ‘Checkpoint 2025’: A full-year recap feature for users; here’s how to see your Discord wrapped
Discord Checkpoint 2025: Discord has released its first yearly activity summary, Discord Checkpoint 2025. Users can now see their message counts, voice channel hours, top emojis, most active servers, and frequent DM friends. Exclusive avatar decorations are also available. The feature is rolling out gradually and requires the latest app version.
Erika Kirk to open up about life, loss and politics in town hall airing on CBS
Three months after her husband, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated, Erika Kirk will open up about life, loss, the state of political discourse and more in a one-hour town hall event moderated by Bari Weiss, CBS News' editor-in-chief.
Connecting Maine: how fiber internet is fueling small business growth
For one Boothbay Harbor business, broadband has helped them grow online sales and reliably process credit cards during busy in-store hours.
Small Business Saturday Redo
Small, locally owned shops can be found throughout the Kenosha Area. Some have been here for generations, while new ones continue to open. Since Mother Nature snowed all over our special day (on November 29) to support small businesses, let's try again! See the Facebook link of what businesses to visit in person on Saturday, December 6 during normal business hours for great deals and more!
Diablo 4 Season 11 arrives just hours after The Game Awards, fueling speculation among fans that Blizzard timed the launch as a deliberate strategy. But why?
Season 11 of Diablo 4 arrives in the shadow of The Game Awards, and fans are debating whether Blizzard’s timing was a coincidence or a calculated move to maximize attention.
Congress pulls major college sports bill after bipartisan backlash: 'Not ready for prime time'
The move to pull the SCORE Act by GOP leaders two hours before it was slated for a final vote was seen as a sign it didn't had enough support to pass.
Epic bans indie game Horses from its storefront 24 hours before release
Developer Santa Ragione previously said it was at risk of closure after Valve blocked the game from Steam.
I flew in Air India's posh business-class seat for 15 hours. I didn't want to get off the plane.
My long-haul international flight in Air India's business class had great suite-style seats, storage, and amenities that made the upgrade worth it.
Health experts urge awareness as seasonal depression affects South Carolinians
As winter approaches and daylight hours shrink, health experts are reminding South Carolinians to monitor their mental health during what can be a challenging season for many.
OPENING ARGUMENTS: Republicans tout politics, critics say racial gerrymandering
By Colleen Steffen TheStatehouseFile.com December 2, 2025 Over and over, critics of Indiana House Republicans’ proposed new congressional map were met with the same phrase from Rep. Ben Smaltz, R-Auburn, at Tuesday’s hours-long hearing of the House Elections and Apportionment Committee. “We have drawn these maps to create a Republican political advantage.” Smaltz authored House Bill
Trump said he was ‘sharper than I was 25 years ago.’ Then he spent an hour appearing to doze off – again.
At the start of a Cabinet meeting just after noon ET on Tuesday, President Donald Trump made his seemingly obligatory reference to “Sleepy Joe” Biden.
First day of sports betting projects future success in Missouri, analyst says
A geolocation service registered 2.6 million uses of betting platforms in the first 24 hours of legal sports wagering in the state.
Indiana's redistricting bill advances to a vote in the House with a lone Republican opposed
An overwhelmingly anti-redistricting crowd testified for hours Dec. 2.
‘Stranger Things’ finale to play at 16 Bay Area theaters. Here’s how to get tickets
Netflix’s two-hour capper to the nine-year, five-season hit science fiction series is set for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Wait times drop in King County for people in mental health crisis
Two years ago, the average wait time for patients to get a mental health evaluation from a Designated Crisis Responder was nearly 5 days. Now, it's 11 hours.
“Stranger Things” series finale runtime confirmed, sets over 500 locations for theatrical release
The series capper will be released in theaters as "Stranger Things: The Finale," running just over two hours. Here's how to find a cinema near you.
I watched Bryan Johnson trip on mushrooms for 5 hours. I've lost my grip on reality.
I watched longevity influencer and entrepreneur Bryan Johnson
Is AI making us stupid?
Artificial intelligence can execute tasks in seconds that once took humans hours, if not days to complete. While this may be great for productivity, some researchers are concerned that our increasing use of AI could be impacting our ability to tackle difficult problems and think critically. To find out where the science stands, and how worried we should be about the potential of AI to change how we think, Ian Sample hears from Madeleine Finlay and Sam Gilbert, professor of neuroscience at University College London
Shopify experienced instability for hours on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Last year, it handled $11.5 billion between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Last year, between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the platform handled $11.5 billion in sales, according to a Shopify press release.
How Data is Changing Science – Part 3: The Infrastructure Layer
In Part 1 of this series, we examined how science is beginning to change. Less fieldwork, fewer lab hours. More screens. More simulations. Instead of waiting for nature to do […]
Science must move from materialism to mystery
Theoretical physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín argues that modern science has become trapped in a framework that mistakes matter for the whole of reality. In this wide-ranging interview, Gómez-Marín challenges the foundations of materialism, defends the scientific study of near-death experiences, and calls for a new type of science grounded in mystery and a renewed sense of the sacred. He suggests that abandoning materialism could open the door to a deeper understanding of consciousness, death, and the purpose of human existence. Simon Custer: You are both a theoretical physicist and a neuroscientist, and you have also been fiercely critical of materialist theories of mind and consciousness. What do you think the ultimate nature of reality is?Àlex Gómez-Marín: I don't know what the ultimate nature of reality is, but what I try to first assess is whether the stories that they [mainstream science] have told us about it are right, or maybe whether there are other alternatives. That's why I've been a fierce critic of materialism. As a scientist, I realized that they had sold us this idea that to be a good scientist you also had to subscribe to many other -isms, like materialism, reductionism, and even secularism. And so first I think one needs to unmount these -isms, and then, as is happening today in consciousness studies, we have a huge landscape where there isn't only one game in town, the idea that matter is the only thing that really exists. But because we are studying the hard problem of consciousness, it may be the case that other views of reality, like idealism, or even dualism, or other theories like dual aspect monism... these are philosophical ideas that now, I think, have room in science to be taken seriously. How does something like materialism relate to dualism or idealism? What is materialism in the first place?Well, materialism is the philosophical position that matter is the only really ‘real’ thing in the universe. And I think that worked kind of well because science started 400 years ago and Galileo made that split, I call it the foundational wound. It was a great business move.He said, let's start doing science on that portion of reality that lends itself more easily to mathematization and measurement. So, for some reason, the solidity of this table or the movement of planets lend themselves very well to this foundational idea of science. But as time went on, 400 years later, we realized that we had forgotten the other side, which is what really matters.What really matters is pain, is love, is feelings, sensation, consciousness, which is very hard to define, but very intimate. We all know what it is. It's that thing that disappears when we go into deep sleep and comes back in the morning. SUGGESTED VIEWING On the edges of knowledge With Michael Shermer, Rupert Sheldrake, Güneş Taylor It's what it is like to be, as Nagel said. It's the feeling of being alive. So, materialism is good to study certain things, but then when it ossifies into this ideology and then is dressed like science, now it's preventing us from understanding these key questions that are really that everybody wants to know.Why are we here? Why do we feel reality? Where do we go when we die? And so we need other ways. We need pluralism. I'm only asking for having more options on the table and taking them seriously. Why does materialism fail to explain consciousness? For example, if you were to lobotomize me, I would not be a functional human being. What do you say to someone who might think that materialism adequately explains the mind?Well, here we could speak about different things. We could talk about physics or about neuroscience. I happen to have training with both.For instance, for neuroscientists, 99% of them, I'm not included in that portion, believe that the brain can only be a productive organ. It's an organ that somehow, somewhere, consciousness emerges. It's like a lamp. And then something happens, magic happens, and then consciousness emerges.That's the position you need to be if you're a materialist because if the only really ‘real’ thing is matter, then you need to say, just give us some more time and money and we'll figure out how mind emerges or is produced from matter. There are many philosophically sophisticated ways of criticizing this.Now there's another option, which is the brain as a permissive organ. This was said by William James more than 100 years ago.Now then the brain wouldn't be like this machine, like for instance, a heat engine whose smoke is consciousness, which is what we would have in the first big model, the productive model. But in the permissive model, the brain would be a kind of a filter. And so the brain would still have a very important role in consciousness, but it wouldn't be a productive role.It would be permissive, much like a filter or much like a prism which would receive light. And - I'm speaking metaphorically - it would receive the light of the mind and then it could reflect it and refract it.Now, with these two big options on the table, I think we can make progress into what I call the edges of consciousness, which are all these experiences, weird experiences that many people have, but we don't talk about enough, like near-death experiences, precognitive dreams, synchronicities. These experiences are very important for humans and they have a place in the permissive hypothesis and they are literally impossible in the productive hypothesis. So that's yet one more reason to explore alternatives to materialism. There may be anecdotal evidence for near-death experiences, but is there robust evidence that would be accepted by the majority of scientists who subscribe to the scientific method?Sure. And the plural of anecdotes, someone said, is data.And there's a lot of data. Actually, this year is the 50th anniversary, half a century, since Dr. Raymond Moody realized that we have two ears and one mouth and started listening to what his patients had to say about their experiences while they were clinically dead.The heart had stopped, breathing had stopped in these patients. These patients would come back and tell him these amazing stories that some people may say are hallucinations, but for the patients were hyper-real, like seeing light at the end of the tunnels, seeing deceased family members waiting for them, feeling bliss.___I would say the evidence suggests that the mind can survive the death of activity of the brain.___And so he and others started taking them seriously and writing their accounts down. And then you can do a science based on that material of experience that people have. Now, on the more objective side, more recently people have started to measure what's going on in the brain when people are clinically dead and brought back. This has opened a proper field of study, which is near-death studies.Evidence is a difficult word, because sometimes people think that when you say evidence, this is just the final proof. Evidence is like in a jury. You bring testimony, you bring pieces of data that point in one direction or another.I would say the evidence suggests that the mind can survive the death of activity of the brain. When brains are broken or shut off, there can still be mind going on. And that's revolutionary.That would entail that when we die, it's not game over, which, by the way, is the thesis of materialism. If consciousness survives, materialism dies. It's game over for materialism if something of us continues after we die. Do you think that there is mental continuity after death?Well, I think so, and I believe so, and I could also say I may have experienced it myself, because four years ago I had a near-death experience. I was in the hospital, I lost a lot of blood, and I saw those beings at the end of the tunnel, three beings, and there was yellow light. I was in a well, I was looking upwards, and I hadn't read about NDEs by then, but when I came back from this experience, I decided I would try to integrate this also in my professional life. Not just my personal life, of course, but my professional life as a physicist and as a neuroscientist. So I may have had the experience of glimpses of what an afterlife would be, and I'm not ashamed to say it in this way, and then one can do science of it, and then one can do philosophy of it.One can think about what -isms we were discussing, what views on reality would allow those experiences to be really ‘real,’ as opposed to, well, poor guy, the brain was kind of broken, it must have been a hallucination. Do you have a view about whether individuality or “the ego” persists after death, or whether we sort of merge into some sort of cosmic consciousness instead?I don't know, but my view would be along those lines you're suggesting. I think we could speak about a kind of universal mind, and then the problem is not how we emerge from matter, but how we fragment from a more holistic consciousness into these individual eddies and then when we die, this kind of dissipates.But I'm not sure. For instance, idealism would promote that view, but then what would survive of us after these eddies just vanish and become again the big Consciousness, I'm not sure what that would be. I don't know for sure, but I would tell you I believe something of us survives.And there are other lines of research, not just near-death experience, that can address this really hard question of survival. For instance, there are children who remember previous lives. This was studied by Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia for more than 50 years.___Research takes place within a selection mechanism that also sometimes reinforces things that are not very scientific.___It's amazing research. He went all over the world, especially in the East, and collected all these case studies, all these stories. In plural, these were data of kids, very young age, who would describe up to 40 items that then he could go and verify.There was no internet. There was really no way the kid could know. Why would the kid say that when I was living in this other body and I was a woman and that's how my house would look like or that's how I would die, right? Again, there is evidence, not proof, but there's evidence not only that something weird and interesting is happening as we cross the threshold, but also when we come back to this life.Scientists should not be afraid of studying this, but they are because there's stigma. There's usually stigma upon the enigma, and this is so unfortunate. And one of the reasons is because of the ideology of materialism, because those things cannot be possible. What is wrong with the politics of science such that they have generated this stigma?So many things. Science is a human activity to begin with.So it falls prey to all our passions and ego and greed. That's one thing. Science is a job for the good and for the bad.You need to get a salary. You need to get grants. Research takes place within a selection mechanism that also sometimes reinforces things that are not very scientific.And then, we didn't have time to unpack this, but science for many years become entangled, as I was suggesting before, to other -isms, materialism, secularism. So anything that smells like the afterlife, people may think has to do with God, and then they freak out.Anything that suggests that there's something about the mind that may not need a physical material substrate to exist, it smells like non-materialism. So, all these -isms are ideologically blocking that kind of research, and then there are all these sociopolitical constraints as to what should be studied and what shouldn't be studied.I call it the backstage of science. Sometimes we scientists or science communicators seem to speak as if the data is the only thing that matters. We say, well, data and theory.But then there's a third leg of this stool, which is all the politics that goes behind the scenes. And we often don't speak about this, and it's quite vicious and petty, and it's very real. Why is materialism so attractive to most scientists?Well, an easy answer is because we've grown up with it.It's what the educational system promotes, and that's what you hear when you go to university. So it's like growing in a culture. It feels like the air in which you breathe.So it's very hard to begin with to detect, well, maybe there's another alternative. Maybe there are other ways of doing science, other environments in which one could do science. That's one reason.And other reasons maybe are more profound, and I'm not qualified to explain them, but I could say, looking at this 400-year history of science, since it started around 1623 with Galileo's book The Assayer, that science went and coupled with all what's going on in the West.And so the fall of religion, you could say, and science presented us this new alternative that then could be coupled very well with other -isms, and this idea of growth, and then science losing its good twin brother, which was philosophy. There's a whole natural history of science starting as philosophy, kind of emancipating or breaking out from philosophy, and then marrying technology, and then marrying other social systems.From that point of view, materialism is a very convenient idea to propose. There were attempts, like the German idealists tried to do a more romantic science. But no, the idea prevailed, like Francis Bacon said: You should pursue nature through all her corners, he said, and make her spill her secrets.Our attitude towards nature in the science that dominates is very much reflecting how we treat nature in our society, in our culture, like a resource to extract secrets by force and then dominate it. How is materialism related to the notions of growth and progress? What's wrong with having a productive citizenry?This is another very interesting and very difficult question to answer.But there's this recent book coming out by Paul Kingsnorth. In it, he explains this idea of the machine and this idea of progress. And this, again, this conflation of more is better, of we need to go forward always, and convincing us that the way to do that is to continually extract more from nature. But because we don't have the religious context anymore, because God is dead, then what do we have? We have what we can do as humans with our own gadgets.It's kind of the story of the Promethean fire. We will just build anything to make ourselves God.A good example today is transhumanism. Transhumanism is this pseudo-religion dressed in technoscientific language whose goal is very religious. They promise immortality, they promise redemption, they promise transformation of the entire natural world, but it's done by human means through technology. Are you suggesting that we can't have ethics without religion?Well, we should have ethics with or without religion. That's another pruning that has happened in science. We say, forget about aesthetics, although some physicists still think that beautiful means probably true, and forget about politics. We pretend there's no backstage of science, and even let's forget about ethics.___Science needs to be in the service of mankind.___Scientists, when they become more like engineers, they're just thinking how to make things work so that they can go to the moon, go to Mars, make machines that think, but they don't think whether that's a good idea.And also consider metaphysics. Many scientists for a long time pretended, and maybe that comes from the stream of positivisms, that really one doesn't need metaphysics at all, except that materialism is always the metaphysics running the system.You see, it's not just ethics. It's the pruning of all of these, you could say, five main legs of philosophy that just makes a kind of unconscious science, a science that doesn't really know what it's doing. It's doing it very well locally, but it just doesn't know what it's doing globally. Do you think science has to have an ultimate vision and purpose behind it for it to be effective or for it to be meaningful and transformative?Yes, a way I would say that is that science needs to be in the service of mankind. And it hasn't been that. And we can see it through, you know, when we discovered the secrets of the atom, and all of a sudden, the Manhattan Project, and then we create nuclear weapons.And now we're trying to crack how machines may think, and now we're creating this mess, right? So science needs to be in service of mankind, not in service of a few ideas that maybe want to make more money or just dominate upon nature. What about planes, trains, automobiles, and modern medicine? Hasn't science served mankind by helping us develop those technologies?Yes and no. I see where you're going, and it's fair.I came here by plane, and it's a blessing. When I almost died, the surgeons did their job, and they saved my life. But these two forced choices between Luddites and Silicon Valley types, I think, of course, it's a false dichotomy.Progress, in a way, it's good, but we often don't speak about the dark side of the moon. We say the great things that progress has brought, and we don't speak about the disasters, the side effects that it has come with, and the same when we promise new technologies. We tend to think that any technology is great, that email is going to save us so much time because we don't need to write letters and send them anymore.Is that true? I spend so many hours a week writing emails. Let's just say there are great things about it and bad things about it. People like Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, for example, argue that we've made moral progress over time because of the Enlightenment. Do you think that's totally wrong-headed?I think he's emphasizing a side of the moon, and he does that very well, and you can find tons of plots where there's a slope going up and say it's great. But I think he should also tell the not-so-friendly story.But if your ideology is just to resist and continue to explain that the Enlightenment is the best thing ever and reason is the best thing ever… this feels to me like you're worshipping these abstractions.I'm very critical of it and also of these, again, science communicators and scientists that say, Oh, science says, in the name of science, experts say. It's like, come on, let's be careful because we can shoot ourselves in the foot by putting forth to the people an image of science that we know is not really true. Recently there's been a resurgence of spirituality and of people who say that they're spiritual but not religious, especially in the United States. If materialism is going away, what is going to fill that gap? Are we going to return to traditional religion? Do you see that being connected with the rise of the political right?I'm not a fortune teller, so I don't know what's going to happen. But, yeah, we could say we're in this post-materialist age and even post-secular age. One cannot come back to the past, but maybe just to contact with the roots is a good idea.What do I mean by that? I think we need to do a science 2.0, a science that says thank you to Galileo and thank you to materialism, but we need to reinvent even a new kind of scientific method. We need to do so in a culture where we realize humans cannot thrive in a vacuum where there's this idea that the sacred has to be removed.Now, how do we do that without bringing in back all the vices of religion? I don't know. I'm from a Catholic country.Here we are in England, so there are differences and interreligious dialogue has always been a challenge. But I think maybe a way of putting it is: after all these conflicts and branchings I was quickly alluding to, science from philosophy and then also from religion, now there's a time of reconciliation perhaps and maybe debates in the proper sense, like exchange of ideas in service of learning and getting into something higher than both poles. We need science to talk to religious people and it's interesting when people say they're spiritual and not religious.I think this is just a way of saying, no, I don't want to go back, I want to go forward. But at the end of the day, religions have offered us practices and grounding that we now desperately need. Everybody can and should just meditate or pray or do whatever they want, but we're in a crisis and it's time for reconciliation. What do you say to critics that say you are merely projecting our need for meaning onto a fundamentally indifferent universe?Yeah, I know that the typical science communicator says something like this. But we're not projecting. Human beings feed on meaning.It's the other way around. If you're a materialist, because the only thing that there is is matter, all that comes next, free will, consciousness, meaning, this is a kind of illusion that we need to explain.They're just craving for meaning, but there isn't really for them. I would also like to remind my materialist friends that for decades, if not centuries, they've said in the name of science, we know that this and this and this doesn't really exist. I think now they sense they're forced to say, well, actually, we don't know. We've been saying, for instance, that there's nothing after you die, and now probably they need to admit that they don't know the answer.___We need to do a science 2.0, a science that says thank you to Galileo and thank you to materialism, but we need to reinvent even a new kind of scientific method.___So it's a moment to open up possibilities and also to gently but fiercely critique these claims that I think harm society. If you say in the name of science, get on with it, when your father dies, you'll never see him again. Well, what the F do you know about it? You haven't studied the literature, you haven't had any of those experiences, and basically what you're doing is you're just doing marketing on ideology. This needs to stop. Do you think that it's scarier for some people to entertain the thought that there might be life after death, compared to a materialist worldview where you just die, given that there might be consequences for unsavory behaviour?Well, death and dying is scary. It's maybe the ultimate ending. It's a limit on life, and when we're in this conquest mode, we don't like limits.And it also has, there's a shockwave backwards, so I think if you change your notion of what death is or may be, you live differently. It also has consequences, as you're saying, for the future because this is not our only goal here and we come back in whatever form. And again, different religions would say different things. I the East, they are more happy with the idea of reincarnation, and here in the West, there are other preferences. But in any case, it changes how we live, and that's really what matters.It's not about just projecting or imagining what we'll be after, but how we live now and also how we treat those who are dying. So it goes from the individual to the families, to the hospitals.Now in the near-death research I do, this has ramifications at all these levels, all the way to society.But our society is thanatophobic. It has a phobia of death. We don't want to hear about death, and this is another thing we need to put on the table and be willing to talk about it. Do you think that we might get closer to answering ultimate questions like why is there anything at all if we jettison materialism?That’s an excellent question, Simon. Two things: we should stop treating reality, I believe, as a great sudoku, as an enigma, as something that with intelligence, money, and time that we will crack and instead treat reality more like a mystery. And what you do for in front of a mystery is not to be the clever guy in a class and say “I’ll solve you” but more like “I will bow and you will transform me.”I know this sounds a bit like a scientist speaking like a mystic. But I think this reorientation is needed. In the end, we won’t crack the big questions, but they will transform us. If we free ourselves from this prison of materialism, the way we will explore these questions will be freer, more creative, and in service of mankind. Do you think exploring mystery is the reason why we are here?I think we are here because, and this pseudo-theological argument I’m making off the cuff, But the One, the Absolute, if there is such a thing, had everything except limitation. We are that absolute experiencing that contingency. It’s like an act of divine proprioception. It’s a wonderful adventure, it’s just incredible to be alive. Perhaps we have forgotten why we are here and the whole point is to experience the flesh.Let me end by saying this. I criticize materialism harshly. I bang on this dead horse, because I think it’s dead. But matter is a great mystery. So maybe my invitation is as follows: hey materialist friends, come here, let’s work on materialism 2.0! Consciousness is a mystery, but matter is also a mystery. The fact that we can have an intersubjective experience consensus, the fact that we can apply mathematics, that we can measure things... the physical world we take for granted, but it is a great mystery too.Maybe that’s related to your last question: why are we here? Why did spirit decide to incarnate? Being in the flesh may be a great thing if spirit decided to do so.Àlex Gómez-Marín, thank you very much.My pleasure.
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