Surprising Science — October 3, 2009

The High Cost of Dying

Anti-aging expert Aubrey de Grey came through Big Think Friday afternoon looking not a bit older than when he first appeared on our site, in December 2007. He was in New York for the two-day Singularity Summit at the 92nd Street Y. We interviewed him for an hour and then joined him for a pre-singularity soiree that lasted until early this morning. Among the many reasons he gave for devoting his career to defeating aging was a sobering economic one: in the last year of our lives, Americans spend as much on medical care as they spend on doctors in all the years up to then combined.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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