Stories from the Edge

Near-Death Experiences Are Being Studied in Hospital ICUs. The Results Aren't What Skeptics Expected.

The standard explanation for near-death experiences is that they are a product of the dying brain — oxygen deprivation, neurotransmitter floods, the mind's last-ditch attempt to make sense of its own shutdown. It's a clean, materialist explanation, and for decades it was enough to stop the conversation.

The problem is that researchers have now spent twenty years trying to confirm this explanation in controlled hospital settings, and the data is not cooperating the way anyone expected.

The Researchers Who Proved Plants Scream

The plants in the greenhouse were stressed. They had been left without water for several days, or had their stems cut, or had been left alone. And they were, as it turned out, making noise about it. Not noise you can hear. The sounds registered between 20 and 100 kilohertz

The Future Is Already Here — and It Says It Understands

I went looking for hand cream. I found the machinery underneath everything. A company built on care deployed undisclosed AI to perform it — and only revealed the truth when pressed.

A Third of Americans Consult Tarot or Astrology. This Is Not a Trend. It's a Shift.

One in three American adults now consult tarot cards or astrology as part of how they navigate their lives. When a third of a country does something, the question is no longer why they believe it — it's what need it's meeting that nothing else is.

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