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C of I Students Shine at Murdock College Science Research Conference - The College of Idaho
Twenty-five members of The College of Idaho community traveled to Vancouver, Washington, on November 7–8 to participate in the annual Murdock College Science Research Conference, a leading regional event showcasing undergraduate scientific research. Every C of I student in attendance presented the results of their summer research projects, reflecting the College’s strong commitment to hands-on, inquiry-based learning.
We skipped our annual Christmas celebrations with extended family and went on vacation instead — just the 4 of us
Instead of our usual big holiday celebration with extended family, the four of us spent Christmas traveling and making new traditions on our trip.
I went hands-on with the Galaxy Z TriFold at Dubai Mall — Samsung's tri-fold has a distinct advantage over the Huawei Mate XT, and the design is much better than I expected
It costs an absurd amount of money, but the Galaxy Z TriFold isn't just a tech demo — this is a tablet-sized foldable you can actually use.
Outstanding Seniors in the College of Science: Dylan Weaver
The College of Science is proud to recognize 10 outstanding seniors who went above and beyond during their time as Wildcats. Dylan Weaver is this semester's recipient from Chemistry & Biochemistry.
I flew overseas for a festival. I don't regret my trip, but I wouldn't travel like this again.
This summer, I went to Portugal for the music festival Afro Nation. I felt like I didn't get to see the country I'd flown all the way out to visit.
Trump rips NY Times over ‘seditious’ reporting about his health
President Trump late Tuesday went after The New York Times over “seditious” reporting about his health. “The New York Times, and some others, like to pretend that I am ‘slowing up,’ am maybe not as…
I went through early menopause at 29. It upended my work and life for nearly two decades — here's what finally helped.
After dealing with endometriosis since she was a teenager, Claudia Zimmerman had a hysterectomy at age 29. This was the start of a 17-year struggle.
I went on a monthlong nomad cruise. The travel disappointed, but the community onboard didn't.
After 15 years as a digital nomad, Kaisu Koskela went on her first cruise. She found it both exciting and overwhelming.
Chan Discusses China’s Politics of Inequality
Associate Professor of Government Alexsia Chan recently discussed the research that went into her book Beyond Coercion: The Politics of Inequality in China, in a talk sponsored by the Asian Studies Program and the Political Science Department at Clark Uni
Analysis: Trump’s answer for everything: Blame Biden
It feels like a lifetime since Joe Biden was in the Oval Office, such is the turmoil and transformation unleashed since he went home to Delaware. But one person in Washington never stops obsessing about the 46th president — his predecessor and successor.
Sports betting roundup: College football playoff bracket set, NFL offers up more upsets
Following Saturday’s games, the 12-team College Football Playoff bracket was revealed, with games beginning Dec. 19. It wasn’t a good NFL Sunday for the favorites at the BetMGM online sportsbook — they went 6-6 straight up. In college football, Georgia was a 1.5-point favorite against Alabama in the SEC championship and rolled to a 28-7 win.
Science with Practice: ‘A doorway into the world of scientific curiosity’
Twenty years ago, at a time when student debt was at an all-time high and the university faced stiff state and federal funding cuts, the Science with Practice program launched to provide experiential learning opportunities for students and pay them for their work. Since then, nearly 800 CALS students have enrolled in the program and course (AGEDS 3120).
How much sense would a David Jolly-Gwen Graham ticket make for Governor?
The Democratic candidate says he’ll name his running mate before the August Primary.
Where the Original ‘America First’ Leader Went to Die
Visiting the grave of Charles Lindbergh, the original nativist celebrity, whose beliefs would fit right in to Donald Trump's vision of America.
“Understanding the Science,” by Camille Bordas
Katherine’s phone rang, and, because it was Adrian calling, everyone went quiet, trying to hear the famous actor’s voice.
Neon Liberalism #55: Politics As Culture
Has culture stagnated in the 21st century? Do the last twenty-five years feel like a blur? What can politics learn from the inherent dynamics of cultural change? And is Donald Trump the greatest kitsch artist of our time? Join Samantha Hancox-Li and guest W. David Marx, author of the just-released
Ivy League to NFL? How a kid can look at the big picture as a recruit
Our series behind curtain of D-1 recruiting looks at sports as a path to life success. We also chat with a former player who went from D-3 to the NFL.
QUARLES: When math adds up more in sports than in classroom
Everything went according to planned Thanksgiving week, at least as far as college and pro football games having the results I wanted to see. The right teams — Dallas, and
7NEWS sources: Museum of Science evacuated due to bomb threat - Boston News, Weather, Sports
BOSTON (WHDH) - The Museum of Science in Boston was evacuated Friday after a person went in the building and claimed they placed a bombRead More
U.S. cities come to home of Olympic sports to pitch hosting future world championships
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Sports officials from a dozen United States cities went to the heart of the Olympic family this week to show their country wants to host more world championships and top…
Dragon Age Day Came And Went Without A Word From BioWare
This comes after a ton of internal strife before, during, and after Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Science is a family affair for this ASU grad
Phoenix native Christina Flynn was taking one of her master’s degree final exams when she went into labor with her son — a child who would ultimately help shape her academic journey. She managed to complete the exam before heading to the hospital, a moment that perfectly reflects an academic journey shaped by personal experiences and unwavering determination.
Rebecca Heineman, Transgender Video Game Pioneer, Dies at 62
Fleeing an abusive home life, she went on to win a national Space Invaders tournament, taught herself to program and left a trail of popular games in her wake.
Broncos vs Raiders Week 14: Keys to victory
The Broncos finish off their season series against Las Vegas in Vegas this Sunday, and this is a game that the team cannot afford to overlook, especially considering what went down the first time they faced off a handful of weeks ago. Here’s how the Broncos extend their winning streak to double digits. 1. Get […]
Waynesboro went blue this year. Changing demographics have changed the city’s politics.
The city voted Democratic for the first time in a governor’s race in 40 years. That realignment is being driven by an influx of new residents, many of them working in or around Charlottesvill…
City leaders face questions as lawsuit alleges corruption in entertainment hub rejection
KFOX14/CBS4 went directly to Sunland Park City Hall in an attempt to question city leaders named in a new lawsuit that accuses them of improperly blocking a mul
I went on a trip to Paris with family members ranging in age from 10 to 74. There are 3 things I'd do differently next time.
From doing more research ahead of time to booking group tours, there are a few things I wish I'd done differently on our big family trip to Paris.
Red Dead Redemption Remaster with 4K and 60fps is now live — and it's completely free for owners of the original Xbox 360 version to upgrade to
Relive one of Rockstar Games' most critically-acclaimed games of all time with next-gen graphics as the Red Dead Redemption Remaster is now available on Xbox Series X|S
Crystal Palace XI vs Burnley – Predicted lineup and team news
Crystal Palace travel to Turf Moor on Wednesday looking to get their season back on track. After a promising start to the season, Oliver Glasner’s side recently lost consecutive games against Strasb...
Doctors still unsure about Trump’s heart health after ‘weird’ memo
It is still unclear which imaging services President Donald Trump underwent to evaluate his cardiovascular health. The White House shared a memo Monday as an attempt to put this topic to bed—but questions remain.
NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health Appoints Selwena R. Brewster, MD, MBA As Chief Medical Officer - NYC Health + Hospitals
Brooklyn, NY — NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health today announced the appointment of Selwena R. Brewster, MD, MBA as Chief Medical Officer where
Vanderbilt Is Leading The Future Of Business In Healthcare
Vanderbilt Owen’s Healthcare MBA combines business with hands-on learning, preparing students for diverse careers in a growing industry.
I'm a New Yorker who went to Naples, Florida, for the first time, and 6 things surprised me
My first trip to Naples, Florida, surprised me with waterfront mansions, canals, and a luxurious local airport.
Survey: New York cellphone ban helping student engagement, teacher effectiveness
92% of respondents said the transition to the policy, implemented at the beginning of this academic school year, went smoothly.
I tried the biggest burgers at 5 fast-food chains and ranked them from worst to best
The biggest burgers from McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, In-N-Out, and Shake Shack were all different in flavor profiles and price points.
Ebola outbreak in Congo declared over by health officials
An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now over, Congolese health officials announced on Monday, after the country went 42 consecutive days without recording a new case.
State Variations in the Role of the Reproductive Health Safety Net for Contraceptive Care Among Medicaid Enrollees
This KFF analysis uses 2023 T-MSIS Research Identifiable Files to look at where reproductive-age female Medicaid enrollees received their last contraceptive visit by state. Overall, more than four in 10 (43%) female Medicaid enrollees received their last contraceptive visit of 2023 at a safety net provider, which includes Planned Parenthood clinics, community health centers, state and local health departments, and Indian health services, but there is wide variation by state.
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.
How the Sports Stadium Went Luxe
Is the race to create ever more lavish spectator offerings in America’s largest venues changing the fan experience?
West Ham 0-2 Liverpool
Chris: Disappointed we didn't ask more of a nervous Liverpool team as we weren't totally outclassed. Madness from Paqueta and Bowen needs to do more as captain to shut him down. Michael: Paqueta is an absolute liability and he has cost us on more than one occasion.
Jennifer Bushong | Strategic marketing review: Preparing your business for 2026
As we approach the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, business owners and marketing leaders face a critical juncture. The end of the year signifies a time to reflect
'It was just an MRI.' Trump says he will release MRI results.
President Donald Trump had previously disclosed he underwent an MRI exam on Oct. 10, but he did not say which part of his body was scanned.
Who is National Guard shooting suspect Rahmanullah Lakanwal?
The Afghan man who allegedly shot two National Guard members in Washington, DC, last week went from being a US partner in Afghanistan to spending the last few years in Washington state with his family, where, according to reports and sources who spoke to CNN, he had a hard time assimilating and dealt with lingering PTSD.
Wes Ramsey Returning to ‘Days of Our Lives’ — Who Is He Playing?
The actor previously played Owen Kent back in 2009.