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When Amusing Ourselves to Death was published in 1985, its author, Neil Postman, could not have imagined a world of TikTok reels, YouTube shorts, and infinite scrolls. Yet his warning about the trivialization of public discourse feels eerily prescient. It’s one of those rare works that doesn’t age — the world simply grows into it. The book opens with the image of four American cities, each symbolizing the “spirit of a culture.” Once, Boston represented a world of political a

According to Australia’s Strategic Policy Institute, China now leads in 57 out of 64 of the world’s most critical technologies. Let’s say you take that with a bagful of salt. Even then, it’s a staggering achievement for a country that, in 1950, was desperately poor, agrarian, and largely cut off from the modern world. A big part of the story lies in how China treated education: not as a private ladder for individual mobility, but as public infrastructure for national progress

The World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Global Innovation Index has once again crowned Switzerland the most innovative country in the world. China ranks tenth. At first glance, this sounds plausible — a small, wealthy, research-driven country outperforming a vast developing one. But the details tell a slightly different story. According to WIPO, the outputs of innovation include just two things: knowledge and technology , and creative outputs . In knowledge an

I came across an interview recently, with psychologist Paul Bloom, titled “What’s Wrong with Having an AI Friend?” The question sounds almost mischievous. After all, if an AI can listen patiently, respond with care, and be available at all hours, why not call it a friend? Friendship is more than companionship. It rests on reciprocity, on vulnerability, on the unpredictability of two separate lives bumping against each other. A real friend is fun to be with; but they also can

A recent article in Nautilus asked a question that sounds improbable but is scientifically serious: Could the Sun’s orbit shape evolution? It describes research suggesting that as our solar system moves through the Milky Way, the varying intensity of cosmic rays might influence mutation rates on Earth, subtly shaping the course of life itself. To even imagine such a link requires a mind that is fluent in both astrophysics and evolutionary biology — two fields that, in most

Most of us grow up believing that mathematics belongs to prodigies — children who solve puzzles in seconds, multiply large numbers in their heads, or finish the syllabus before anyone else. The rest of us, we are told, simply don’t have the talent. We learn early that you are either “a math person” or not, as if mathematical ability is something fixed at birth. But the lives of some of the most remarkable mathematicians of our time tell a different story. Maryam Mirzakhani, t

If you listen to the conversations around corporate learning today, they sound like a race. Microlearning, AI copilots, bite-sized...

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is one of the most unsettling novels I’ve read. It isn’t dramatic or loud, but the quiet way it unfolds...

On October 1, the world lost Jane Goodall. She died at the age of 91 while on a speaking tour in California. The news hit me harder than...

In my previous post, I wrote about misconceptions in science and mentioned a film, A Private Universe . In that film, Harvard graduates...

All of us have seen science classrooms with high-achieving students who can ace tests, rattle off definitions, and solve problems neatly....

Corporate learning and development (L&D) has long defined its purpose as building human capability. We design programs, run workshops,...

Walk into most schools today and you’ll hear a familiar refrain: focus on STEM. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are...

Rarely do I come across a book that doesn’t just recycle familiar ideas, but opens up genuinely new ways of seeing the world. Anil Seth’s...

Teaching is usually discussed in terms of skills, methods, or professional expectations. Rarely do we stop to reflect on teaching as a...

In corporate L&D, it’s common to equate learning with training. Roll out a program, measure completion, and hope skills stick. But real...

Every week, a new headline declares that artificial intelligence will “revolutionize learning.” Schools will be transformed, we’re told....