Standing on the top of Mount Everest, a person can literally look at places where plants and animals happily grow and live and reproduce, yet no species has established a permanent self-sustaining population on the upper slopes of Everest.

We suggest that muscular performance capabilities declined during hominin evolution in response to selection for repetitive, low-cost contractile behavior.

It was the kind of science I’d moved to Atlanta to learn to do…

… but if you were to move your hand slowly over a fly it would perceive your hand much like we would perceive grass growing or ice melting or paint drying: it would be too slow to be visible. So here is a good life hack if you ever want to catch a fly with your bare hands: take your time.

… and now the geneticists say I may have 2% Neanderthal DNA, which presumably changes the status of Neanderthals, or the [definition] of species, or [possibly] both.

The units of paleontology, and of biology more generally, are different from the units of paleoanthropology, in that the latter are units in a story of our ancestors, and the ancestors are invariably sacred.

On why the species of historic hominids are so numerous and contested.

A moth will never know what a zebra finch hears in its song, a zebra finch will never feel the electric buzz of a black ghost knifefish, a knifefish will never see through the eyes of a mantis shrimp, a mantis shrimp will never smell the way a dog can, and a dog will never understand what it is to be a bat. We will never fully do any of these things either, but we are the only animal that can try.

Our Umwelt is still limited; it just doesn’t feel that way. To us, it feels all-encompassing. It is all that we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is to know. This is an illusion—one that every animal shares.

Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.

The precise ways in which human cognition differs from that of other species remains a topic of intense debate, but many data currently support the hypothesis that it is an early emerging set of social skills for reasoning about conspecifics as intentional agents, coupled with a distinctly cooperative and prosocial motivation, that fuels many of our most remarkable cognitive achievements.

For people trying to make sense of a religious perspective or simply questioning materialism, you should be looking at the missing heritability problem.

The authors recommend public education, particularly about invasive species, as a way to reduce the unintended harm to the environment caused by these practices.

… did she feel her heart chambers darkened

It’s a very sobering thing to think about the long future.

… all beings are subject to death. Death is their end

Pasenadi laments the death of his aged grandmother.

What even is the immune system and how does it actually work?

is one a brahmin due to birth,
or else because of actions?

Two brahmin students ask the Buddha about what makes a brahmin. The Buddha points out that, while the species of animals are determined by birth, for humans what matters is not your race or caste but how you chose to live.

Even today it has been estimated that nearly half the population of India defecate in the open, a major cause of […] water born disease.

… but someone was about to arrive in Texas to stick up for these bats

After you listen, be sure to check out the book they discuss at the end, All Yesterdays and its sequel, All Your Yesterdays.

… the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see them more clearly is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea what you are looking at.

Half a history of, and accessible meditation on the philosophy of, science and half memoir of the author’s grappling with depression, this pleasantly easy read captures something of “emptiness.” It shows how Buddhism still has much to add in the West’s ongoing struggle to reconcile its extremes of naive, Christian eternalism and cynical, “scientific” nihilism.

Death is the moment when the system that maintains the far-from-equilibrium state ceases to exist.

… madness itself is not a role that can be played any old how. In every generation are quite firm rules about how you should behave when you are crazy.

A meditation on the impact of biotechnology on society.

In 94 B.C., the Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote, “In the area south of the Yangtze the land is low and the climate humid; adult males die young.”

“Anthropocene” is the proposed name for a geologic epoch in which humans have become the major force determining the continuing livability of the earth. The word tells a big story: living arrangements that took millions of years to put into place are being undone in the blink of an eye. The hubris of conquerors and corporations makes it uncertain what we can bequeath to our next generations, human and not human.

This is a gorgeous pair of edited volumes collecting papers and artwork grappling with the enormity of climate change and painting a uniquely multifaceted portrait of our damaged planet. Better suited to the coffee-table than the night-stand, these hefty books contain not a single, pat message but just a series of snapshots from around our pale blue dot.

If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust essentialism. Keep in mind that what seems like rationality is often just rationalization, playing catch-up with subterranean forces that we never suspect. Focus on the larger, shared goals. Practice perspective taking. Individuate, individuate, individuate. […] You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.

A magisterial and heart-felt survey of neuroscience, psychology, and biology which paints a broad but rigorous picture of how and why humans act the way they do–for better or for worse–and what we (individual meatbags) can do to be our best selves.

The book is based on Sapolsky’s Stanford course, “Human Behavioral Biology”, available for free on YouTube.

… animals are not passive objects for humans to ignore or argue over–or collect–but “individuals with their own perspectives on life,” and members of communities with which our species coexists. That animals are in this sense political actors is an underrecognized and, to my mind, potentially powerful point

What can we learn, and what kind of world would we build, if we learned how to listen to animals?