There are tons of theories surrounding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and, more broadly, the fictional world of Middle-Earth in which the books take place. One of these theories is that Middle-Earth is actually not a fictional world at all, but our own Earth in prehistoric times, before — as historian Dan Carlin recently put it in his podcast...

About 15 years ago, I had what I’ll charitably call a crisis of confidence. After spending years successfully climbing the corporate ladder, I hit a wall. Hard. I had been on a pretty awesome professional trajectory for more than two decades, which included being named the youngest vice president and division general manager ever at an iconic, century-old...

In our Universe, the laws of physics tell us all the possibilities for what’s allowed to conceivably exist, but only by actually observing, measuring, and experimenting with our Universe itself can we determine what’s truly real. In Einstein’s general relativity, one of the very first possibilities that was ever discovered was for a black hole: a region...

There was no internet during the Enlightenment, but something surprisingly similar did exist in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was the Republic of Letters: a virtual, global community of scientists and intellectuals who exchanged information using the fastest technology available at the time — the postal service. 15,000 letters The clue is in the...

This week, I have the pleasure of sharing with you my Q&A with Lisa Kaltenegger about her new book, Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos. Lisa is a world-renowned astrobiologist and the Director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University. Earlier this year, we published a joint paper with Sara Vannah proposing a new...

Evelyn went car shopping on a sunny summer day and drove off the lot in a new convertible. Sure, the payments were more than she had budgeted for, but the condition was mint, and it was nice to feel the wind in her hair. Thing is, Evelyn lives in Seattle, and these days, she’s not even sure the soft top still retracts. Then there’s Nathan. Every month,...