Author: Mary

A couple of recent news stories describe recent work on how children learn language. One study looked at bilingual babies and monolingual babies and found somew...

Seems like it’s all about music this week at the Thinking Meat Project, which is a nice coincidence because the Lotus World Music Festival is in town (one...

Neurologist Oliver Sacks has written a haunting essay for the New Yorker about musician and musicologist Clive Wearing, a man who suffered a brain infection ove...

Terry Bisson’s short story “They’re Made Out of Meat” describes the incredulous and dismissive reaction of a non-meat-based intelligence...

Lately I’ve had several chances to go out stargazing. In addition to relishing the sight of a lunar eclipse or a distant galaxy, I’ve enjoyed the op...

This article from American Scholar is one of the most haunting pieces of autobiographical writing I’ve ever read. Paul West, author of 50+ books and total...

When Daniel Dennett visited Indiana University last year, one of his talks included frequent references to magic. Not the “real magic” that doesn...

A recent study indicates that clinically depressed people have a harder time than their healthy counterparts in controlling their emotional response to negative...

New Caledonian crows are a fascinating species. The corvids tend to be relatively smart birds anyway (some people think they’re smarter than most people; ...