Mary Martin

Hope is a flower of a different order, one that blooms in a striving acknowledgment, even celebration, of finitude and whatever we can bear through its innumerable relations.

Quanta interviewed 19 current and former NLP researchers to tell that story. From experts to students, tenured academics to startup founders, they describe a series of moments — dawning realizations, elated encounters and at least one “existential crisis” — that changed their world. And ours.

The most interesting debate about leadership, then, is between those (like Machiavelli) who believe that leaders make (and overcome) history, and those (like Marx, and like the author of King David’s story) who believe that history makes (and constrains) leaders.

“People with certain diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration slowly lose their eyesight as photoreceptors at the center of the eye degenerate,” said Udo Römer, an engineer whose expertise is in photovoltaics, commonly known as solar panel tech. “It has long been thought that biomedical implants in the retina could... See more

This is why the idea that speech is violence is so dangerous. It tells the members of a generation already beset by anxiety and depression that the world is a far more violent and threatening place than it really is. It tells them that words, ideas, and speakers can literally kill them. Even worse: At a time of rapidly rising political polarization... See more

More than taking up time, these high-functioning, high-achieving people have found that mindfulness practice creates time.” One executive shared that it yielded the greatest ROI he’s ever seen.