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How geospatial science can boost equitable access to healthcare
Nature Health - The World Health Organization should include a wider range of data for their Geolocated Health Facilities Data Initiative, so that the spatial accessibility of healthcare can be...
How geospatial science can boost equitable access to healthcare
Nature Health - The World Health Organization should include a wider range of data for their Geolocated Health Facilities Data Initiative, so that the spatial accessibility of healthcare can be...
Why cardiology leaders should be careful about the quality metrics they focus on
"Data should simply be a measure of a broader organizational objective," one expert explained. "When the data becomes the goal, that's where organizations can get into trouble."
Trump weighed in on Cabinet squabble over ride for July Fourth flyover
The president encouraged acting attorney general Todd Blanche to fly on one of NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s jets despite the FAA’s prior objection to the planes.
Schrödinger’s anthill: Quantum entanglement found in a crystal large enough to hold
A centimeter-sized crystal has revealed clear signs of quantum entanglement, showing that large, everyday objects can display surprisingly deep quantum behavior. The discovery could help solve the mystery of strange metals while opening new possibilities for ultra-precise quantum sensors and other advanced technologies.
Minnesota K-12 health standards’ future unclear after administrative judge objects
Officials expected to phase in the state’s first-ever statewide school benchmarks on topics from nutrition and first aid to sex abuse prevention through 2028. That timeline is in jeopardy now after an administrative law judge ripped the state’s process to implement the standards.
First-Ever Close-Up Revealed of Earth's Rare 'Minimoon'
The smallest object ever visited by human spacecraft?
Ukraine recovery: International Coalition for Science, Research and Innovation signs Gdansk Declaration
On 26 June, the first-ever High-level Steering Committee of the International Coalition for Science, Research and Innovation in Ukraine signed the Gdansk Declaration during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Poland. The Declaration outlines a shared ambition to support Ukraine in increasing its research and development investment to 3% of the GDP following the end of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression. This is in line with the European Research Area target. It also outlines various activities that Coalition members can implement to achieve this objective. The Declaration further provides a strategic framework for the Coalition’s work to support Ukraine’s modern and
Bio-inspired backpropagation-free training for optical neural networks
Light: Science & Applications - Bio-inspired backpropagation-free training for optical neural networks
Protein lactylation in health and diseases: molecular mechanisms, biological significance, and clinical implications
Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy - Protein lactylation in health and diseases: molecular mechanisms, biological significance, and clinical implications
Barriers to understanding how many people use AI for mental health support: an estimate and narrative review
npj Digital Public Health - Barriers to understanding how many people use AI for mental health support: an estimate and narrative review
Global dietary estimates for conducting health, environmental and economic impact assessments
Nature Food - The Global Dietary Database for Impact Assessments provides information on what people eat across countries and demographic groups by integrating data on food availability,...
Changing COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 mortality in older adults in Australia, 2022-2025
Communications Health - Changing COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 mortality in older adults in Australia, 2022-2025
Amendment 61: A.4 Rapid Response and Novel Research in Earth Science Final Close Date Deferred
A.4 Rapid Response and Novel Research in Earth Science (RRNES) solicits proposals that advance the goals and objectives of NASA's Earth Science Division by
White House forms UFO science panel led by polarizing Harvard professor
A polarizing Harvard astronomer has been appointed to lead a White House panel studying UFOs. Avi Loeb is leading a new Science Advisory Council tasked with finding the origin of unidentified objects spotted by military pilots and others.
Gaining biological insights through supervised data visualization
Nature Computational Science - This study introduces RF-PHATE, a supervised visualization method that preserves data structure while revealing biological patterns, enabling insights into disease...
Interferometric scattering for optical tomoslicing of transparent solids
Light: Science & Applications - Interferometric scattering for optical tomoslicing of transparent solids
It’s Linux, On A Sega Megadrive
If you were in the market for a games console in 1990, the chances are that the object of your desire was either a Super Nintendo with its 16-bit 6502 derivative, or the Sega Megadrive, sold as the…
Aligning patient and planetary health: planetary health diet adherence and inflammatory bowel disease prognosis across Western and Eastern cohorts
npj Science of Food - Aligning patient and planetary health: planetary health diet adherence and inflammatory bowel disease prognosis across Western and Eastern cohorts
Prevalence and severity of mental health problems in early-career researchers: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Nature Human Behaviour - Mental health concerns among early-career researchers are increasingly gaining attention. This preregistered systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis quantifies...
Morgan Stanley Raises PT on International Business Machines (IBM) Stock
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is one of the Best Cloud Computing Stocks to Buy According to Hedge Funds. On June 23, Morgan Stanley lifted its price objective on the company’s stock to $267 from $225, and maintained an “Equal Weight” rating on the shares. As per the analyst, Dell and HPE earnings demonstrate that the enterprise server demand […]
Generative artificial intelligence creates delicious, sustainable, and nutritious burgers
npj Science of Food - Generative artificial intelligence creates delicious, sustainable, and nutritious burgers
Dopant-localized mechanoluminescence in simple oxides
Light: Science & Applications - Dopant-localized mechanoluminescence in simple oxides
Mental health as both outcome and determinant in climate adaptation
Nature Climate Change - Mental health should not be viewed solely as a passive outcome of climate adaptation. Rather, it serves as a key determinant of cognitive capacity and shapes the...
Evaluating the robustness and readiness of large frontier models in health AI applications
Nature Medicine - Adversarial evaluation of leading AI models uncovers gaps between benchmark success and robustness, highlighting limitations in current health AI benchmarks and their ability to...
Multi-wavelength spin dynamics of defects in hexagonal boron nitride
Light: Science & Applications - Different excitation wavelengths strongly influence the spin dynamics and photophysics of single spin defects in hexagonal boron nitride, enabling a threefold...
Circulating metabolites at the crossroads of lifestyle and brain health
Nature Aging - Circulating metabolites might provide early insights into brain aging before clinical symptoms appear. Ahmad and colleagues show that specific blood metabolites in midlife are...
Fermented food microbiome: influence on oral and gut microbiota, and human health
Nature Reviews Microbiology - The bioactive compounds and microbial consortia contained in plant-based fermented foods support oral and gut microbiota, host immune function and metabolic...
Chinese spaceplane releases object into orbit, according to commercial space surveillance
Chinese spaceplane releases object into orbit, according to commercial space surveillance China’s secretive spaceplane has released an object into orbit during its ongoing fourth mission, according to space surveillance firm LeoLabs.
Interstellar comet may be oldest object seen in our solar system, research finds
Observations suggest comet spent billions of years on ‘vast unimaginable trajectories’ around our galaxy
Building a Roadmap for Hubble Science into the 2030s: Revealing Atmospheric Structure and Evolution in Substellar Worlds Using HST
Substellar objects occupy a unique place in our universe
Future astronauts could walk across rocks from deep inside the Moon
A colossal ancient collision may have left some of the Moon’s deepest secrets surprisingly close to future Artemis landing sites. By recreating the impact that formed the giant South Pole-Aitken basin—the Moon’s largest and oldest crater—scientists found that a low-angle strike from a large, iron-cored object blasted material from deep inside the Moon, including mantle rocks.
Iran MOU signals ‘major shift’ from military to economic, political objectives for Trump: Retired general
Ret. Gen. Jack Keane on Sunday said the US-Iran memorandum of understanding signals a “major shift” in the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy ideals in the Middle East. “It’s a…
Multi-omics insights into floral–fruity aroma formation during Pu’er tea fermentation inoculated with a synthetic fungal community
npj Science of Food - Multi-omics insights into floral–fruity aroma formation during Pu’er tea fermentation inoculated with a synthetic fungal community
The growing concentration of national influence in global science
Nature Human Behaviour - This analysis of nearly 240 million scientific papers reveals growing concentration of discursive influence in core, resource-wealthy countries, indicating that a few...
A cloud-based miniscope for neurosurveillance of brain health and disease in freely behaving animals
Nature Methods - A miniscope with cloud-based operation and multicontrast capabilities enables continuous recording of neuronal activity, hemodynamics or cellular dynamics over multiple days. This...
Long-term health risks of e-cigarettes after smoking cessation
Nature Medicine - Real‑world evidence from a nationwide cohort suggests that using electronic cigarettes after smoking cessation may attenuate the benefits of quitting in reducing lung cancer...
Wedbush Initiates Coverage on Flutter Entertainment (FLUT) Stock with Outperform Rating
Flutter Entertainment plc (NYSE:FLUT) is one of the Stocks with Potential to Explode in 2026. On June 17, Wedbush initiated coverage on the company’s stock with an “Outperform” rating and a price objective of $138.00. As per the analyst, the company is the world’s largest online sports betting and internet gaming operator and has exposure to the […]
The Engineering That Made The Honda S2000's Manual Gearbox A Cult Object
With metal-rod linkage, multi-cone synchros, and satisfying throws, shifting the Honda S2000's manual transmission feels like operating a bolt-action rifle.
A body on the edge of our Solar System has an atmosphere – and scientists still aren't sure how that's possible | BBC Sky at Night Magazine
An object known as (612533) 2002 XV93, lies in the Kuiper Belt and is 500km (310 miles) wide. And astronomers found an atmosphere round it.
Modelling the odor profile of fungal Solid-State Fermentation
npj Science of Food - Modelling the odor profile of fungal Solid-State Fermentation
Smartphones passively monitor heart health
Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering - A study in Nature uses deep learning to passively monitor resting heart rates via front-facing smartphone cameras, yielding highly accurate cardiovascular...
National Science Foundation reverses decision to dismantle oceans-monitoring network after outcry
The Trump administration has reversed a plan to dismantle a sprawling ocean monitoring network after vigorous objections from Democratic lawmakers and scientists.
National Science Foundation halts plans to dismantle oceans observatory project
The Trump administration has reversed a plan to dismantle a sprawling ocean monitoring network after vigorous objections from Democratic lawmakers and scientists.
Hoy, business leaders pull out of effort to make it easier to sweep homeless encampments
A statewide petition led by Salem Mayor Julie Hoy sought to repeal a state law that requires cities and counties to be “objectively reasonable as to time, place and manner,” when clearing a homeless encampment from a public place. After state officials required the petition’s backers to change the ballot's title and description, they dropped the effort. To comment on this story, use the form at the end of the report.
Council approves framework for future entertainment districts after heated debate
The Norfolk City Council approved an ordinance on Monday establishing the framework for future entertainment districts within the city, despite objections from some council members and residents who argued the
Elon Musk’s Next Move May Be a Mega-Merger of SpaceX and Tesla
Some shareholders might object, but there is little they could do, legal experts say.
Chronotherapy considerations in lithium treatment for bipolar disorder
Nature Mental Health - In this Perspective, Ray and colleagues review 50 years of studies on the effectiveness and toxicity of lithium and argue that its effects depend on dosing time. They propose...
An EPA Researcher Details the Agency's Assault on Science
In late January, the Trump administration began shutting down projects within the EPA’s independent science division that touched on climate change and environmental justice. Air quality researcher Thomas Luben, who had worked at the agency for 18 years, was fired for objecting.
Council approves framework for future entertainment districts after heated debate
The Norfolk City Council approved an ordinance Monday establishing the framework for future entertainment districts within the city, despite objections from some council members and residents who argued the proposal
Testing longitudinal gene–environment interactions
Nature Computational Science - A gene–environment interaction test (SAGELD) is developed to speed up large-scale genome-wide analyses using longitudinal data, facilitating novel discoveries...
A competency framework for digital public health in Europe: an updated scoping review
npj Digital Public Health - A competency framework for digital public health in Europe: an updated scoping review
President Trump stated four objectives at the beginning of the war in Iran. How many have been accomplished so far?
No Peeking: What Are These Two Objects Meeting In The June Twilight Sky?
Views like this do not happen every year.
Trump proposes putting political goals above objective criteria in deciding who gets government grants, from childcare to research to public safety
The White House says the changes it seeks would strengthen transparency, accountability and oversight. Critics say federal grantmaking would become too political.
Team careers in science: formation, composition and success of persistent collaborations
npj Complexity - Team careers in science: formation, composition and success of persistent collaborations
Global multipolarity through the lens of network science and game theory
npj Complexity - The “Theory of Competing Networks”, which integrates network science and game theory, reveals that cooperation is more stable than hierarchy, offering insights into...
A novel belief-degree-based uncertain Tchebycheff norm DEA model for the case study of risks prioritizing in e-business projects
Scientific Reports - A novel belief-degree-based uncertain Tchebycheff norm DEA model for the case study of risks prioritizing in e-business projects
A dying star could create a new universe instead of a black hole
What if some black holes aren’t black holes at all? A new theoretical study suggests that when a massive star collapses, it might not form a singularity hidden behind an event horizon. Instead, the collapse could trigger the birth of a tiny new universe inside the dying star. Driven by dark energy, this miniature cosmos would expand and push back against gravity, preventing complete collapse and creating an exotic object known as a gravastar.
A career of taking biological species for a spin
Nature Reviews Chemistry - Ahead of his 70th birthday, Adriaan (Ad) Bax, Distinguished Investigator at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spoke about his career in science.
SEC warns Protect College Sports Act will trigger more lawsuits, not fewer
A June 8 memo obtained by CBS Sports shows the conference's specific objections to the Protect College Sports Act.
Environmental roots of neonatal health: how social and structural exposures shape early-life outcomes
Pediatric Research - Environmental roots of neonatal health: how social and structural exposures shape early-life outcomes
Mike Greenberg Rips 'Disgraceful' Fan Behavior During NBA Finals
Mike Greenberg is a lifelong fan of the New York Knicks, but make no mistake, he doesn't condone everything the fan base has done during this year's playoff run. After the Knicks erased a 29-point deficit to defeat the Spurs in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, a fan chucked an object at Victor Wembanyama ...
Facilitators of, barriers to and strategies for health-system guidance implementation: a critical interpretive synthesis
npj Health Systems - Facilitators of, barriers to and strategies for health-system guidance implementation: a critical interpretive synthesis
Business Restructuring Review Vol. 25 No. 3 May-June 2026
In This Issue Texas Bankruptcy Court Adopts Barnet Rule Requiring Foreign Debtor to Have U.S. Assets to Be Eligible for Chapter 15 Relief In In re Siu-Fung Ceramics Holdings Limited, No. 24-33299, 2026 WL 382424 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. Feb. 10, 2026), the court denied petitions for chapter 15 recognition of Hong Kong bankruptcy and liquidation proceedings commenced on behalf of an individual debtor and a group of companies that he owned or controlled. According to the court: (i) the corporate debtors' Hong Kong liquidation proceeding was not eligible for chapter 15 recognition because the attorney retainer upon which such relief was based was not funded until nine months after the chapter 15 petition date; and (ii) the individual debtor's Hong Kong bankruptcy case could not be recognized because the debtor's "center of main interests" on the chapter 15 petition date was not in Hong Kong, and he did not even maintain an "establishment" there. [read more …] Southern District of Texas Clarifies Post-Purdue Course for Consensual Third-Party Releases and Gatekeeping Provisions In In re Container Store Group, Inc., 676 B.R. 356 (S.D. Tex. 2026), appeal filed, No. 26-20166 (5th Cir. Apr. 14, 2026), cross appeal filed, No. 26-20166 (5th Cir. Apr. 24, 2026), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas addressed consensual third-party releases and gatekeeping provisions in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P., 603 U.S. 204 (2024). Consistent with existing Fifth Circuit precedent, the court confirmed that, in appropriate circumstances, consent for third-party releases may be obtained through a creditor's failure to opt out of granting that consent. But, the court ruled, consent through an opt-out mechanism essentially can never be inferred for creditor classes that stand to receive no recovery under a chapter 11 plan and that are deemed to reject the plan by operation of applicable bankruptcy law. Instead, those classes must affirmatively opt in to any release. The court also narrowed and remanded the bankruptcy court's acceptance of a broad gatekeeping provision, ruling that such provisions must correspond to the restrictions established by Fifth Circuit precedent. [read more …] Delaware Bankruptcy Court: Initial Transferee Need Not Be Defendant in Fraudulent Transfer Avoidance and Recovery Litigation The Bankruptcy Code gives a bankruptcy trustee the power to avoid asset transfers that are either made with the intent to defraud creditors or that are "constructively" fraudulent because an insolvent debtor did not receive adequate value in exchange. The Bankruptcy Code also permits recovery of an avoided transfer from not only the initial recipient, but also from subsequent transferees. Courts disagree over whether a transfer must actually be avoided before the trustee can seek recovery from a subsequent transferee and whether the initial transferee must also be a defendant in the recovery litigation against a subsequent transferee. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware weighed in on this debate in Phillips v. SS Associates LLC (In re ONH AFC CS Investors, LLC), No. 23-10931 (CTG), 2026 WL 312892 (Bankr. D. Del. Feb. 4, 2026). The court adopted the majority view, ruling that the initial transferee need not be a defendant in avoidance and recovery litigation against a subsequent transferee, but that the trustee must establish the elements necessary to avoid the initial transfer as part of the recovery litigation. [read more …] New York Bankruptcy Court Weighs In on Adequate Assurance of Future Performance under Assigned Leases and Chapter 11 Plan Exculpation Provisions In order to assume and assign an executory contract or unexpired lease, a bankruptcy trustee must cure most defaults under the agreement and provide "adequate assurance" of the assignee's future performance. However, the Bankruptcy Code provides no guidance as to the meaning of "adequate assurance" other than with respect to shopping center leases. In In re Broadway Realty I Co. LLC, No. 25-11050, 2026 WL 147505 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Jan. 19, 2026), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York examined this issue in connection with a proposed assignment of thousands of residential leases as part of a free-and-clear sale of debtors' properties. The court held that "adequate assurance" does not mean a guarantee of the assignee's future performance, but merely demonstration that the assignee has the ability to satisfy the underlying obligations. The bankruptcy court also ruled that an exculpation provision in the debtors' chapter 11 plan exonerating non-estate fiduciaries from liability for actions taken in connection with the chapter 11 case was unobjectionable, provided it was limited in scope to postpetition conduct and actions taken in connection with implementation of the plan after its effective date. [read more …] Newsworthy Corinne Ball (New York) (Hall of Fame), Bruce Bennett (Los Angeles), Carl E. Black (Cleveland), Jeffrey B. Ellman (Atlanta), Brad B. Erens (Chicago), Gregory M. Gordon (Dallas), Heather Lennox (Cleveland/New York), Joshua M. Mester (Los Angeles), and Kevyn D. Orr (Washington) were included in the 2026 edition of Lawdragon 500 Leading Bankruptcy and Restructuring Lawyers. The Daily Business Review selected Isel M. Perez (Miami) as an "On the Rise" winner for the Florida Legal Awards. The Florida Legal Awards annually recognize those who have made significant contributions to the legal industry in Florida. Dan T. Moss (Washington/New York) was inducted as a Fellow in the 37th Class of the American College of Bankruptcy at its Annual Meeting in March 2026 in San Antonio, Texas. Christine Borries (Munich) was ranked in the practice area Restructuring/Insolvency in the 2026 edition of Chambers Germany. The 2027 edition of The Best Lawyers in Singapore™ recognized Sushma Jobanputra (Singapore) in the practice area Insolvency & Reorganization. The restructuring transaction involving Eissmann Automotive North America, Inc. received the "2025 Turnaround of the Year (Large Company)" at the Turnaround Management Association (Detroit) Annual Awards Reception. T. Daniel Reynolds (Cleveland) and Nick Buchta (Cleveland) represented subsidiaries of Eissmann Group Automotive in connection with the parent company's German insolvency proceedings. Roger Dobson (Sydney) is among 40 Jones Day lawyers recognized by The Best Lawyers in Australia 2027 for his contributions in Banking and Finance Law; Distressed Investing & Debt Trading; Insolvency and Reorganization Law; Litigation. An article written by Corinne Ball (New York) titled "Ard Finance—A Global Enterprise Combining an LME With a Foreign Insolvency Proceeding and Chapter 15" was published in the April 21, 2026, edition of the New York Law Journal. An article written by Alex Sapp (New York) titled "Recent Developments in Section 510—Subordination" was published in the 2025 edition of the Norton Annual Survey on Bankruptcy Law. An article written by Brad B. Erens (Chicago) titled "New York Bankruptcy Court Approves Insider DIP Litigation Financing" was published on April 6, 2026, by Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Corinne Ball (New York), Dan T. Moss (Washington/New York), David S. Torborg (Washington), and Isel M. Perez (Miami) titled "New York District Court Affirms Narrow Scope of 'Public Policy Exception' in Chapter 15 Cases" was published on April 6, 2026, by Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Jeffrey B. Ellman (Atlanta) titled "Statutory Cap on Lease Rejection Damage Claims in Bankruptcy Applies to Solvent Debtors" was published on April 6, 2026, by Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Trisha L. Mowbray (Real Estate; Chicago) and Ryan Sims (Washington) titled "Chapter 11 Plan that Abridged Non-Debtor Lessee's Rights to Remain in Possession After Rejection Unconfirmable as Having Been Proposed in Bad Faith" was published on April 6, 2026, by Lexis Practical Guidance. Lawyer Spotlight: Ben Rosenblum Ben Rosenblum, a partner in the New York Office, represents debtors, creditors, and other parties in out-of-court restructurings and court-supervised proceedings, including chapter 11 cases, municipal bankruptcies, international insolvency matters, and stockbroker liquidations. His experience spans industries such as manufacturing, shipping, mining, aviation, energy, real estate, and telecommunications. Ben's notable debtor representations include Peabody Energy, the City of Detroit, Chrysler LLC, Spansion Japan, and Dana Corporation. Significant creditor representations include General Maritime Corporation, Calpine Corporation, American Home Mortgage, and Murray Energy. He currently represents creditors in Puerto Rico's restructuring. He also has extensive experience advising financial institutions on bankruptcy law as applied to derivatives.
Science for kids: a melody that mends
Pediatric Research - Science for kids: a melody that mends
A reporting checklist for large language models in behavioural science
Nature Human Behaviour - Large language models offer new opportunities for behavioural science, but their rapid evolution poses challenges for research rigour. We introduce a consensus-based...
Planet nine mystery deepens as new discovery challenges hidden planet theory
Astronomers have spent years searching for a possible hidden giant planet far beyond Neptune. Unusual orbits among distant Kuiper Belt objects have fueled the Planet Nine theory, but recent discoveries are challenging the idea by showing more stable motion than expected. If Planet Nine exists, it may be much farther away than originally thought.
FIA and Liberty push to find F1 2027 engine solution to be approved over Spanish GP
New fuel flow increase limits could salvage proposed tweaks to the 2027 engine formula following objections from Ferrari and Audi
House passes Ukraine security aid bill over objections of GOP leaders
The legislation only reached the floor after six Republicans broke ranks to force a vote.
Loyal Royal? Well, Only If You’re One Royal
TTE debutant Niall shares his objections to Reading’s new One Royal scheme and how it’s been handled.
Radio scans find no evidence of alien tech from interstellar comet 3I/Atlas
The SETI Institute said Wednesday that extensive radio scans by its telescope in Northern California found no signs of otherworldly technology from our solar system’s latest interstellar visitor.
Scientists Create Water Tweezers to Move Small “Surfers”
Breakthrough shows how water waves can be used to move and hold floating objects
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science
With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!
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