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Apple Releases iOS 26.2 With Alarms for Reminders, Lock Screen Changes, Enhanced Safety Alerts and More
Apple today released iOS 26.2, the second major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.2 comes a little over a month after iOS 26.1 launched. iOS 26.2 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and later, as well as the second-generation iPhone SE. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Dec. 12-14 and beyond
Check out what’s going on around the region.
Framework Raises DDR5 Memory Prices By 50% For DIY Laptops
Framework Computer had worked to keep their memory prices lower than other laptop vendors amid the ongoing memory shortages throughput the industry worldwide
Omaha business owners frustrated by Streetcar construction
An open house held by the city at the Durham Museum tonight to answer questions about ongoing streetcar construction, but what business owners want is solutions.
These Bucs uniforms are so 🔥
The Tampa Bay Bucs are going old school with the throwbacks.
Bad Bunny slips and falls onstage mid-concert, but his fans keep the show going
The show must go on, even if you slip and fall. Just ask Bad Bunny, who did exactly that onstage during his recent concert in Mexico.
Orbitals announced exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2
During The Game Awards 2025 tonight, was announced exclusive for Nintendo Switch 2. The title launches sometime in 2026. Orbitals, a co-op space adventure game, comes from Kepler and Shapefarm. The goal of the game involves going on a search for the crumbling station home of Maki and Omura. Here’s a bit of additional information: Grab a friend and launch...
Packers-Broncos Preview
DENVER (AP) For the first time in a decade, Denver Broncos (11-2) stand atop the AFC playoff race heading into the holidays. They're the league's only unbeaten team at home. They've won 10 consecutive games and they've saddled their last 11 visitors with a loss going back 14 months.
'We're not just going to want to be fed AI slop for 16 hours a day': Analyst sees Disney/OpenAI deal as a dividing line in entertainment history
"I think the reason this bidding is approaching $100 billion-plus is the content library and the potential to do a Disney-OpenAI type of deal."
Lurie expands inpatient psychiatric unit amid ongoing youth mental health care shortage
The four new beds and 20 new staffers are designed for kids with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities. The $4.5 million addition is a first for the state but can't fill the major dearth in youth psychiatric beds across Illinois.
Michael Jordan's 23XI Racing Settles Lawsuit with NASCAR: 'Going to Grow the Sport'
Michael Jordan’s race team will continue to compete in NASCAR after Thursday's settlement. Here's what to know.
Major Tomb Raider announcement leaks ahead of The Game Awards
A number of Tomb Raider leaks have started circulating ahead of tonight's The Game Awards show.
Mental health needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities can't be ignored
William Skipworth’s three-part investigation in the New Hampshire Bulletin has laid bare the ongoing traumas experienced by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The community’s response has been swift — shock, grief, and a collective demand for action to prevent future harm. As the dust settles, pressing questions are emerging about oversight and accountability: Which […]
Kings collapse late as Kraken rally for OT win
Los Angeles surrendered its lead late in the third period before going on to fall in the extra period.
Predators aim to keep climb going vs. shorthanded Blues
After staggering to a 6-12-4 start, the Nashville Predators have worked their way back toward the Western Conference playoff race. They finally gained confidence while winning five of their last seven games.
Kamala Harris is extending her book tour in 2026 and hitting politically important territory
Kamala Harris is extending her book tour into 2026 – but now it’s going to be about more than selling books.
Howard Marks says AI is going to have a 'terrifying' impact on employment — and it goes well past lost paychecks
Howard Marks, cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management, said AI could strip people of the structure, purpose, and self-worth they gain from work.
Teleflex to sell trio of business lines in deals totalling over $2bn
Teleflex’s acute care, urology, and OEM selloffs reflect an ongoing strategic shift following plans announced earlier this year to split its business in two.
Star-studded ‘Roast of New Jersey’ is coming to N.J. theater, Jeff Ross hosting
A list of comedians with Jersey ties are going to tear Jersey apart
Democrats aim to keep their 2025 election momentum going: From the Politics Desk
Plus, a new poll shows Trump and the GOP have lost ground with young voters.
Comings & Goings
Here’s a look at recent changes in the business landscape in the Sioux Falls area.
Small business optimism rises, but owners say qualified workers are still hard to find
Small business optimism rises despite ongoing labor quality concerns as well as inflation challenges, according to new NFIB data showing mixed economic signals.
Walmart's outgoing CEO on stepping down: 'I've never had a blank calendar' and it's 'kind of exciting'
Walmart's outgoing CEO Doug McMillon reflects on a career leading over 2 million employees and the thrill of an upcoming break.
Pebble's founder introduces a $75 AI smart ring for recording brief notes with a press of a button
After rebooting the Pebble smartwatch, founder Eric Migicovsky is expanding his company's device lineup with a new smart wearable: an AI-powered smart ring known as Index 01. Named for the finger where the ring is meant to be worn, the new $75 ring is not meant to be a competitor to the always-on, always-listening AI devices, like the AI pendant Friend, but instead offers a way to record quick notes and reminders with a press of a button on the ring's side. AI only comes into play via the open source, speech-to-text, and AI models that run locally on your smartphone, via the open source Pebble mobile app. That is, if the Ring's button is not being pressed, it's not recording. (And this is a press-and-hold gesture, too, which means you can't start the ring's recording and then let go to surreptitiously record a conversation.) You can wear the stainless steel ring while in the shower, washing hands, doing dishes, or in the rain, but you would have to take it off for other water-related activities, like swimming. At launch, it's water-resistant to 1 meter. The ring is also not a fitness tracker or sleep monitor. It doesn't record details about your heart rate or health. And it's not there to be your AI friend. "I'm not trying to build some AI assistant thing," Migicovsky told TechCrunch in an interview. "I build things that solve one main problem, and they solve it really well," he explains. "I think of as external memory for my brain...that's what this is. It's always with you." Plus, the ring has been designed to be highly reliable and privacy-preserving, he says, as all your thoughts are stored on your phone, not in the cloud. There is no subscription. Migicovsky has been wearing the ring for three months now and says he cannot imagine going back to a world where he doesn't always have a memory device with him. "The problem is that, during the day, I get ideas or I remember something, and if I don't write it down that second, I forget it," he says. The ring solves this problem, he adds, without becoming another device you need to charge. "The battery lasts for years," Migicovsky claims. Technically, the ring is said to support roughly 12 to 14 hours of recording. On average, the founder says he uses it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. At that rate, he'll get about two years of usage. When the ring's battery dies, you can ship it back to the company for recycling. When using Index, you can record up to five minutes of audio, which can be saved to the ring and synced to your phone later. This makes sense for recording briefer, personal thoughts and notes, even when you don't have your phone handy, but it wouldn't work for recording a longer chat, like a presentation, meeting, or in-person interview of some kind. The ring also supports 99+ languages and has a bit of on-device memory, in case you're not in Bluetooth range of your device, where the recording is ultimately saved and transcribed. (The raw audio is retained, too, in case the speech-to-text is garbled due to loud background noise). If you own a Pebble smartwatch or one from another brand, your recorded thought can even appear on the watch's screen so you can verify it's correct. The ring works with Pebble's mobile app, which offers notes and reminders, but can optionally integrate with your phone's calendaring system, too, or other apps, like Notion. And the ring's software is open source, which makes it hackable by the community, the founder points out. Because of its open nature, the ring's button is already programmable. In addition to the press-and-hold gesture, you can program the ring to do other things with a single or double press, like play or pause your music or control the shutter on your phone's camera. You could use it to send a message through the universal chat app Beeper, which Migicovsky also created, or you could add your own voice actions via MCP. A new approach to hardware Migicovsky acknowledges that hardware can be difficult to get right -- as the previous exit of Pebble to Fitbit showed. (Fitbit, too, was later acquired by Google in 2021). "I didn't earn any money during Pebble -- we exited, but it was not a great exit," Migicovsky admits. This year, however, he decided to reboot the Pebble project after Google open sourced the PebbleOS, which opened up the door to new hardware. With his new company, Core Devices, Migicovsky plans to do things differently. Still, the founder doesn't regret his previous choices, he clarifies. "I wouldn't have gone back and changed anything. I loved what we built. I loved what we did. I love the company that we built, but it's not the only way to build a company," he told TechCrunch. " And, speaking as an ex-YC partner, there are -- there's a time and a place for building a venture-backed startup. Some companies are phenomenal when they raise money and build a big team, and I tried that...I think what I'm doing now is trying an alternative path, which is start from profitability," he says. The new company is a small team of five, self-funded, and focused on sustainability. So far, Core Devices has shipped the Pebble 2 Duo smartwatch with a black-and-white display. Its first run sold out, and the company is now preparing to ship the upgraded version, the Pebble Time 2. The newer device, which has seen 25,000 pre-orders, is a stainless steel watch with a larger, color e-ink screen. As for the Index 01, the ring's pre-order offer ends in March 2026. After that, the price increases to $99. It currently comes in silver, polished gold, and matte black and works with iOS and Android devices. Customers can select from eight ring sizes and three colors.
PlayStation leak confirms Leon will be in Resident Evil Requiem after all
Leaked Resident Evil Requiem cover art confirms what we suspected all along - Leon Kennedy is indeed going to be a part of the game.
Redding's ex−Big League Dreams sports park is on comeback trail
The restaurant going in at the Redding Sports Park complex aims to draw families coming to baseball games and couples out on a date night. Here's how.
Is Caesars Entertainment a Contrarian Opportunity After Recent Debt Reduction Efforts?
If you are wondering whether Caesars Entertainment is a contrarian bargain or a value trap at today’s price, you are not alone. This article will break that question down in plain English. The stock has bounced about 2.6% over the last week and roughly 19.9% in the past 30 days. However, this comes after a tough stretch, with the share price still down sharply over the year and over the longer term. Recent headlines have focused on Caesars’ ongoing debt reduction efforts and strategic...
Going back to school during the pandemic linked to improved child mental health
A new study finds that school reopenings during the pandemic were associated with declines in diagnoses of anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions in children.
LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman says he learned a lesson from a visit to Epstein's island: 'Note to self, Google before going'
Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn cofounder, said he visited Epstein's island as part of his work fundraising for MIT.
Outgoing Detroit Mayor Duggan: 'I changed the politics in this city'
Speaking to the Detroit Economic Club, Duggan, who is wrapping up his third and final term in office, said he changed the narrative of "us versus them."
Analogue 3D Game Console Rolls Out Throwback Transparent N64 Colors
Tonight we're going to game like it's 1999, as the modern recreation of the Nintendo 64 launches in "funtastic" colors of that year.
UF commits to ‘neutrality,’ institutionally
‘What we’re going to accomplish today is the voluntary restraint of leadership not to speak.’
Lando Norris is 'only just getting going' after winning F1 title - and rank British world champions
Lando Norris has joined an illustrious sporting club, and is only just getting going at the very peak of F1, writes Andrew Benson.
Take an early look inside West York’s The Bakery entertainment venue
A historic West York bakery is transforming into an entertainment complex with dining, music, etc. See how the project, opening in 2026, is going.
Why an 18-year-old founder is still going to college
An 18-year-old founder is building her AI startup during high school — and explains why she doesn't buy the Silicon Valley dropout myth.
TGA 2025 Predictions: What's Going To Happen At The Game Awards?
The Game Awards is always packed with news and reveals, but just what is it we'll see? We've got some ideas.
Why do Gen Z have a growing appetite for retro tech?
Gen Z are going retro, with studies showing a resurgence in people buying tech in the modern age that can be dated back decades.
41 People Who Almost Died Are Sharing How They Barely Survived, And It's Terrifying
"That night, I knew I was going to die. I called my mother to have a last conversation with her and then called the hospital."
Tybee Island Marine Science Center hosts Whale Week to educate about endangered North Atlantic right whales
Conservationists continue working to ensure the species doesn’t disappear forever as the whales face ongoing threats in their critical habitat areas.
iOS 26.2 Will Add Two New Features To CarPlay In December
When Apple launches iOS 26.2 in December, CarPlay will get two useful new features that iPhone owners are going to want to check out.
What the heck is going on at Apple?
Apple for decades has been known for a consistent string of design-forward, tech-defining consumer products that have shaped how people use technology.
Unlucky Red Wings try to right the ship at Kraken
Things haven't exactly been going the Detroit Red Wings' way recently.
Diet: How Going Plant-based Could Prolong the Health Span
Should you go plant-based for a healthy life? Here's what the latest research says.
Sayin, Mendoza or Pavia? My Heisman Trophy leader going into Championship Saturday is …
Wait, am I allowed to tell you that?
Analysis: Trump’s retribution campaign is going poorly — and could backfire
President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign has long suffered from a very significant and important deficit — and that’s the actual evidence.
15 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 26.2
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below. Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the download by going to Settings ➝ General ➝ Software Update on your iPhone.
Are you a swing voter? We want to hear how you're feeling about politics
Do you think the country is going in the right or wrong direction? Are you happy with your vote last year or do you have any regrets? Or maybe you sat the election out? NPR wants to speak with swing voters across the political spectrum.
Anthony Letai pledges to ensure stability for extramural and intramural cancer science
Stepping into the NCI director’s job at the end of a nerve-racking year, Anthony Letai wants you to know that the federal government is not going out of the business of cancer research. To access this subscriber-only content please log in or subscribe.If your institution has a site license, log in with IP-login or register […]
ObamaCare anxiety rising among House GOP centrists: ‘To do this is buffoonery’
Frustration is mounting among moderate House Republicans as various competing health care plans appear to be going nowhere, with less than 10 working days left on the calendar before millions of Am…
Dolphins-Jets Preview
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) Tua Tagovailoa is heading to New York looking to keep the Miami Dolphins' late-season surge going - with a bit of perfection on the line.
Ticket offices closed, access, M-ticket… Practical information for Galatasaray
Here is the information you need to keep in mind if you are going to the Stade Louis-II for the match between AS Monaco and the Turkish club this Tuesday, December 9 (kick-off 9 p.m.), for Matchday 6 ...
TriHealth and UnitedHealthcare negotiations could disrupt health insurance
Thousands of people in Cincinnati face potential disruptions in their health insurance or may need to switch providers due to ongoing negotiations between TriHealth and UnitedHealthcare, with critical procedures and birthing plans hanging in the balance.
Why enterprise AI superusers are going best-of-suite
SAP's Stephan de Barse on switching to the suite mindset for AI-powered enterprise success.
Only social media platforms with 'real humanity' will survive, investor and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian says
"At some point, more and more people are going to realize just how compromised much of social media is," Ohanian told Fortune.
Where are top 100 college football recruits going? Signing day updates
College football national signing day is here. Where are the top high school recruits in the 2026 class headed? We will keep you up to date.
Rep. Crow to GOP: Trump is going ‘cost you your job’ after high-stakes TN special election
Popular PS4 Open-World RPG Gets Huge Free Update Today
A popular ongoing PS4 open-world RPG is getting a huge free update today, and includes an appearance from a fan-favorite character.
BI readers told us their grocery bills keep going up. That's bad news for more rate cuts.
Business Insider surveyed readers about how prices have changed. Their answers could mean the next interest-rate cut catches a snag.
Lane Kiffin arrives in Baton Rouge, as the college football coaching carousel keeps going round and round
Michigan State, UCLA, Kentucky, James Madison, Northwestern all have coaches on the move
It seems inevitable that Sam Altman will bring ads to ChatGPT. When will it happen — and what will they look like?
Everyone believes ads are going to end up in ChatGPT. But we don't know when or how — and it's possible Sam Altman doesn't either.
Last Call for 12.1.25 – A prime-time read of what’s going down in Florida
A digest of the day's politics and policy while the bartender refreshes your drink.
Plain English BEST OF: How to Be Happy and the Science of Cognitive Time Travel
Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one!
Mayor Villalobos intensifies effort to confront ongoing issues in McAllen’s Entertainment District
McAllen’s Entertainment and Cultural Overlay District, commonly known as the 17th Street entertainment district, was created in 2005 to allow bars, clubs, and music venues to operate under special permits with added safety requirements.
All of the best Apple Cyber Monday deals 9to5Mac
Here is your collection of the best and most notable Apple Cyber Monday deals. Alongside a host of ongoing deals,...
Why Your Company Needs a Chief Data, Analytics, and AI Officer
Who should be in charge of data, analytics, and AI? While there are many possible divisions of responsibility and reporting structures, a combined role—the CDAIO (Chief Data, Analytics, and AI Officer)—will best prepare organizations as they plan for AI going forward. To succeed, this role needs a clear mandate that includes owning AI strategy, preparing for a new class of risks, developing the AI tech stack, ensuring the company’s data is ready for AI, creating an AI ready culture, developing talent and partnerships, and generating significant ROI on AI investments. Given the emphasis on business value creation, in most cases CDAIOs should be positioned closer to business functions than to technology operations.
Goodman: Lane Kiffin is the biggest villain in SEC sports history
Tommy Tuberville famously lied about leaving Ole Miss before going to Auburn. What Kiffin has done is so much worse.
Mapping the exposome: Science broadens focus to environmental disease triggers
After decades of intense focus on genetics, the biomedical research community is undergoing a major shift, focusing on a new framework called "exposomics."
Science must move from materialism to mystery
Theoretical physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín argues that modern science has become trapped in a framework that mistakes matter for the whole of reality. In this wide-ranging interview, Gómez-Marín challenges the foundations of materialism, defends the scientific study of near-death experiences, and calls for a new type of science grounded in mystery and a renewed sense of the sacred. He suggests that abandoning materialism could open the door to a deeper understanding of consciousness, death, and the purpose of human existence. Simon Custer: You are both a theoretical physicist and a neuroscientist, and you have also been fiercely critical of materialist theories of mind and consciousness. What do you think the ultimate nature of reality is?Àlex Gómez-Marín: I don't know what the ultimate nature of reality is, but what I try to first assess is whether the stories that they [mainstream science] have told us about it are right, or maybe whether there are other alternatives. That's why I've been a fierce critic of materialism. As a scientist, I realized that they had sold us this idea that to be a good scientist you also had to subscribe to many other -isms, like materialism, reductionism, and even secularism. And so first I think one needs to unmount these -isms, and then, as is happening today in consciousness studies, we have a huge landscape where there isn't only one game in town, the idea that matter is the only thing that really exists. But because we are studying the hard problem of consciousness, it may be the case that other views of reality, like idealism, or even dualism, or other theories like dual aspect monism... these are philosophical ideas that now, I think, have room in science to be taken seriously. How does something like materialism relate to dualism or idealism? What is materialism in the first place?Well, materialism is the philosophical position that matter is the only really ‘real’ thing in the universe. And I think that worked kind of well because science started 400 years ago and Galileo made that split, I call it the foundational wound. It was a great business move.He said, let's start doing science on that portion of reality that lends itself more easily to mathematization and measurement. So, for some reason, the solidity of this table or the movement of planets lend themselves very well to this foundational idea of science. But as time went on, 400 years later, we realized that we had forgotten the other side, which is what really matters.What really matters is pain, is love, is feelings, sensation, consciousness, which is very hard to define, but very intimate. We all know what it is. It's that thing that disappears when we go into deep sleep and comes back in the morning. SUGGESTED VIEWING On the edges of knowledge With Michael Shermer, Rupert Sheldrake, Güneş Taylor It's what it is like to be, as Nagel said. It's the feeling of being alive. So, materialism is good to study certain things, but then when it ossifies into this ideology and then is dressed like science, now it's preventing us from understanding these key questions that are really that everybody wants to know.Why are we here? Why do we feel reality? Where do we go when we die? And so we need other ways. We need pluralism. I'm only asking for having more options on the table and taking them seriously. Why does materialism fail to explain consciousness? For example, if you were to lobotomize me, I would not be a functional human being. What do you say to someone who might think that materialism adequately explains the mind?Well, here we could speak about different things. We could talk about physics or about neuroscience. I happen to have training with both.For instance, for neuroscientists, 99% of them, I'm not included in that portion, believe that the brain can only be a productive organ. It's an organ that somehow, somewhere, consciousness emerges. It's like a lamp. And then something happens, magic happens, and then consciousness emerges.That's the position you need to be if you're a materialist because if the only really ‘real’ thing is matter, then you need to say, just give us some more time and money and we'll figure out how mind emerges or is produced from matter. There are many philosophically sophisticated ways of criticizing this.Now there's another option, which is the brain as a permissive organ. This was said by William James more than 100 years ago.Now then the brain wouldn't be like this machine, like for instance, a heat engine whose smoke is consciousness, which is what we would have in the first big model, the productive model. But in the permissive model, the brain would be a kind of a filter. And so the brain would still have a very important role in consciousness, but it wouldn't be a productive role.It would be permissive, much like a filter or much like a prism which would receive light. And - I'm speaking metaphorically - it would receive the light of the mind and then it could reflect it and refract it.Now, with these two big options on the table, I think we can make progress into what I call the edges of consciousness, which are all these experiences, weird experiences that many people have, but we don't talk about enough, like near-death experiences, precognitive dreams, synchronicities. These experiences are very important for humans and they have a place in the permissive hypothesis and they are literally impossible in the productive hypothesis. So that's yet one more reason to explore alternatives to materialism. There may be anecdotal evidence for near-death experiences, but is there robust evidence that would be accepted by the majority of scientists who subscribe to the scientific method?Sure. And the plural of anecdotes, someone said, is data.And there's a lot of data. Actually, this year is the 50th anniversary, half a century, since Dr. Raymond Moody realized that we have two ears and one mouth and started listening to what his patients had to say about their experiences while they were clinically dead.The heart had stopped, breathing had stopped in these patients. These patients would come back and tell him these amazing stories that some people may say are hallucinations, but for the patients were hyper-real, like seeing light at the end of the tunnels, seeing deceased family members waiting for them, feeling bliss.___I would say the evidence suggests that the mind can survive the death of activity of the brain.___And so he and others started taking them seriously and writing their accounts down. And then you can do a science based on that material of experience that people have. Now, on the more objective side, more recently people have started to measure what's going on in the brain when people are clinically dead and brought back. This has opened a proper field of study, which is near-death studies.Evidence is a difficult word, because sometimes people think that when you say evidence, this is just the final proof. Evidence is like in a jury. You bring testimony, you bring pieces of data that point in one direction or another.I would say the evidence suggests that the mind can survive the death of activity of the brain. When brains are broken or shut off, there can still be mind going on. And that's revolutionary.That would entail that when we die, it's not game over, which, by the way, is the thesis of materialism. If consciousness survives, materialism dies. It's game over for materialism if something of us continues after we die. Do you think that there is mental continuity after death?Well, I think so, and I believe so, and I could also say I may have experienced it myself, because four years ago I had a near-death experience. I was in the hospital, I lost a lot of blood, and I saw those beings at the end of the tunnel, three beings, and there was yellow light. I was in a well, I was looking upwards, and I hadn't read about NDEs by then, but when I came back from this experience, I decided I would try to integrate this also in my professional life. Not just my personal life, of course, but my professional life as a physicist and as a neuroscientist. So I may have had the experience of glimpses of what an afterlife would be, and I'm not ashamed to say it in this way, and then one can do science of it, and then one can do philosophy of it.One can think about what -isms we were discussing, what views on reality would allow those experiences to be really ‘real,’ as opposed to, well, poor guy, the brain was kind of broken, it must have been a hallucination. Do you have a view about whether individuality or “the ego” persists after death, or whether we sort of merge into some sort of cosmic consciousness instead?I don't know, but my view would be along those lines you're suggesting. I think we could speak about a kind of universal mind, and then the problem is not how we emerge from matter, but how we fragment from a more holistic consciousness into these individual eddies and then when we die, this kind of dissipates.But I'm not sure. For instance, idealism would promote that view, but then what would survive of us after these eddies just vanish and become again the big Consciousness, I'm not sure what that would be. I don't know for sure, but I would tell you I believe something of us survives.And there are other lines of research, not just near-death experience, that can address this really hard question of survival. For instance, there are children who remember previous lives. This was studied by Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia for more than 50 years.___Research takes place within a selection mechanism that also sometimes reinforces things that are not very scientific.___It's amazing research. He went all over the world, especially in the East, and collected all these case studies, all these stories. In plural, these were data of kids, very young age, who would describe up to 40 items that then he could go and verify.There was no internet. There was really no way the kid could know. Why would the kid say that when I was living in this other body and I was a woman and that's how my house would look like or that's how I would die, right? Again, there is evidence, not proof, but there's evidence not only that something weird and interesting is happening as we cross the threshold, but also when we come back to this life.Scientists should not be afraid of studying this, but they are because there's stigma. There's usually stigma upon the enigma, and this is so unfortunate. And one of the reasons is because of the ideology of materialism, because those things cannot be possible. What is wrong with the politics of science such that they have generated this stigma?So many things. Science is a human activity to begin with.So it falls prey to all our passions and ego and greed. That's one thing. Science is a job for the good and for the bad.You need to get a salary. You need to get grants. Research takes place within a selection mechanism that also sometimes reinforces things that are not very scientific.And then, we didn't have time to unpack this, but science for many years become entangled, as I was suggesting before, to other -isms, materialism, secularism. So anything that smells like the afterlife, people may think has to do with God, and then they freak out.Anything that suggests that there's something about the mind that may not need a physical material substrate to exist, it smells like non-materialism. So, all these -isms are ideologically blocking that kind of research, and then there are all these sociopolitical constraints as to what should be studied and what shouldn't be studied.I call it the backstage of science. Sometimes we scientists or science communicators seem to speak as if the data is the only thing that matters. We say, well, data and theory.But then there's a third leg of this stool, which is all the politics that goes behind the scenes. And we often don't speak about this, and it's quite vicious and petty, and it's very real. Why is materialism so attractive to most scientists?Well, an easy answer is because we've grown up with it.It's what the educational system promotes, and that's what you hear when you go to university. So it's like growing in a culture. It feels like the air in which you breathe.So it's very hard to begin with to detect, well, maybe there's another alternative. Maybe there are other ways of doing science, other environments in which one could do science. That's one reason.And other reasons maybe are more profound, and I'm not qualified to explain them, but I could say, looking at this 400-year history of science, since it started around 1623 with Galileo's book The Assayer, that science went and coupled with all what's going on in the West.And so the fall of religion, you could say, and science presented us this new alternative that then could be coupled very well with other -isms, and this idea of growth, and then science losing its good twin brother, which was philosophy. There's a whole natural history of science starting as philosophy, kind of emancipating or breaking out from philosophy, and then marrying technology, and then marrying other social systems.From that point of view, materialism is a very convenient idea to propose. There were attempts, like the German idealists tried to do a more romantic science. But no, the idea prevailed, like Francis Bacon said: You should pursue nature through all her corners, he said, and make her spill her secrets.Our attitude towards nature in the science that dominates is very much reflecting how we treat nature in our society, in our culture, like a resource to extract secrets by force and then dominate it. How is materialism related to the notions of growth and progress? What's wrong with having a productive citizenry?This is another very interesting and very difficult question to answer.But there's this recent book coming out by Paul Kingsnorth. In it, he explains this idea of the machine and this idea of progress. And this, again, this conflation of more is better, of we need to go forward always, and convincing us that the way to do that is to continually extract more from nature. But because we don't have the religious context anymore, because God is dead, then what do we have? We have what we can do as humans with our own gadgets.It's kind of the story of the Promethean fire. We will just build anything to make ourselves God.A good example today is transhumanism. Transhumanism is this pseudo-religion dressed in technoscientific language whose goal is very religious. They promise immortality, they promise redemption, they promise transformation of the entire natural world, but it's done by human means through technology. Are you suggesting that we can't have ethics without religion?Well, we should have ethics with or without religion. That's another pruning that has happened in science. We say, forget about aesthetics, although some physicists still think that beautiful means probably true, and forget about politics. We pretend there's no backstage of science, and even let's forget about ethics.___Science needs to be in the service of mankind.___Scientists, when they become more like engineers, they're just thinking how to make things work so that they can go to the moon, go to Mars, make machines that think, but they don't think whether that's a good idea.And also consider metaphysics. Many scientists for a long time pretended, and maybe that comes from the stream of positivisms, that really one doesn't need metaphysics at all, except that materialism is always the metaphysics running the system.You see, it's not just ethics. It's the pruning of all of these, you could say, five main legs of philosophy that just makes a kind of unconscious science, a science that doesn't really know what it's doing. It's doing it very well locally, but it just doesn't know what it's doing globally. Do you think science has to have an ultimate vision and purpose behind it for it to be effective or for it to be meaningful and transformative?Yes, a way I would say that is that science needs to be in the service of mankind. And it hasn't been that. And we can see it through, you know, when we discovered the secrets of the atom, and all of a sudden, the Manhattan Project, and then we create nuclear weapons.And now we're trying to crack how machines may think, and now we're creating this mess, right? So science needs to be in service of mankind, not in service of a few ideas that maybe want to make more money or just dominate upon nature. What about planes, trains, automobiles, and modern medicine? Hasn't science served mankind by helping us develop those technologies?Yes and no. I see where you're going, and it's fair.I came here by plane, and it's a blessing. When I almost died, the surgeons did their job, and they saved my life. But these two forced choices between Luddites and Silicon Valley types, I think, of course, it's a false dichotomy.Progress, in a way, it's good, but we often don't speak about the dark side of the moon. We say the great things that progress has brought, and we don't speak about the disasters, the side effects that it has come with, and the same when we promise new technologies. We tend to think that any technology is great, that email is going to save us so much time because we don't need to write letters and send them anymore.Is that true? I spend so many hours a week writing emails. Let's just say there are great things about it and bad things about it. People like Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, for example, argue that we've made moral progress over time because of the Enlightenment. Do you think that's totally wrong-headed?I think he's emphasizing a side of the moon, and he does that very well, and you can find tons of plots where there's a slope going up and say it's great. But I think he should also tell the not-so-friendly story.But if your ideology is just to resist and continue to explain that the Enlightenment is the best thing ever and reason is the best thing ever… this feels to me like you're worshipping these abstractions.I'm very critical of it and also of these, again, science communicators and scientists that say, Oh, science says, in the name of science, experts say. It's like, come on, let's be careful because we can shoot ourselves in the foot by putting forth to the people an image of science that we know is not really true. Recently there's been a resurgence of spirituality and of people who say that they're spiritual but not religious, especially in the United States. If materialism is going away, what is going to fill that gap? Are we going to return to traditional religion? Do you see that being connected with the rise of the political right?I'm not a fortune teller, so I don't know what's going to happen. But, yeah, we could say we're in this post-materialist age and even post-secular age. One cannot come back to the past, but maybe just to contact with the roots is a good idea.What do I mean by that? I think we need to do a science 2.0, a science that says thank you to Galileo and thank you to materialism, but we need to reinvent even a new kind of scientific method. We need to do so in a culture where we realize humans cannot thrive in a vacuum where there's this idea that the sacred has to be removed.Now, how do we do that without bringing in back all the vices of religion? I don't know. I'm from a Catholic country.Here we are in England, so there are differences and interreligious dialogue has always been a challenge. But I think maybe a way of putting it is: after all these conflicts and branchings I was quickly alluding to, science from philosophy and then also from religion, now there's a time of reconciliation perhaps and maybe debates in the proper sense, like exchange of ideas in service of learning and getting into something higher than both poles. We need science to talk to religious people and it's interesting when people say they're spiritual and not religious.I think this is just a way of saying, no, I don't want to go back, I want to go forward. But at the end of the day, religions have offered us practices and grounding that we now desperately need. Everybody can and should just meditate or pray or do whatever they want, but we're in a crisis and it's time for reconciliation. What do you say to critics that say you are merely projecting our need for meaning onto a fundamentally indifferent universe?Yeah, I know that the typical science communicator says something like this. But we're not projecting. Human beings feed on meaning.It's the other way around. If you're a materialist, because the only thing that there is is matter, all that comes next, free will, consciousness, meaning, this is a kind of illusion that we need to explain.They're just craving for meaning, but there isn't really for them. I would also like to remind my materialist friends that for decades, if not centuries, they've said in the name of science, we know that this and this and this doesn't really exist. I think now they sense they're forced to say, well, actually, we don't know. We've been saying, for instance, that there's nothing after you die, and now probably they need to admit that they don't know the answer.___We need to do a science 2.0, a science that says thank you to Galileo and thank you to materialism, but we need to reinvent even a new kind of scientific method.___So it's a moment to open up possibilities and also to gently but fiercely critique these claims that I think harm society. If you say in the name of science, get on with it, when your father dies, you'll never see him again. Well, what the F do you know about it? You haven't studied the literature, you haven't had any of those experiences, and basically what you're doing is you're just doing marketing on ideology. This needs to stop. Do you think that it's scarier for some people to entertain the thought that there might be life after death, compared to a materialist worldview where you just die, given that there might be consequences for unsavory behaviour?Well, death and dying is scary. It's maybe the ultimate ending. It's a limit on life, and when we're in this conquest mode, we don't like limits.And it also has, there's a shockwave backwards, so I think if you change your notion of what death is or may be, you live differently. It also has consequences, as you're saying, for the future because this is not our only goal here and we come back in whatever form. And again, different religions would say different things. I the East, they are more happy with the idea of reincarnation, and here in the West, there are other preferences. But in any case, it changes how we live, and that's really what matters.It's not about just projecting or imagining what we'll be after, but how we live now and also how we treat those who are dying. So it goes from the individual to the families, to the hospitals.Now in the near-death research I do, this has ramifications at all these levels, all the way to society.But our society is thanatophobic. It has a phobia of death. We don't want to hear about death, and this is another thing we need to put on the table and be willing to talk about it. Do you think that we might get closer to answering ultimate questions like why is there anything at all if we jettison materialism?That’s an excellent question, Simon. Two things: we should stop treating reality, I believe, as a great sudoku, as an enigma, as something that with intelligence, money, and time that we will crack and instead treat reality more like a mystery. And what you do for in front of a mystery is not to be the clever guy in a class and say “I’ll solve you” but more like “I will bow and you will transform me.”I know this sounds a bit like a scientist speaking like a mystic. But I think this reorientation is needed. In the end, we won’t crack the big questions, but they will transform us. If we free ourselves from this prison of materialism, the way we will explore these questions will be freer, more creative, and in service of mankind. Do you think exploring mystery is the reason why we are here?I think we are here because, and this pseudo-theological argument I’m making off the cuff, But the One, the Absolute, if there is such a thing, had everything except limitation. We are that absolute experiencing that contingency. It’s like an act of divine proprioception. It’s a wonderful adventure, it’s just incredible to be alive. Perhaps we have forgotten why we are here and the whole point is to experience the flesh.Let me end by saying this. I criticize materialism harshly. I bang on this dead horse, because I think it’s dead. But matter is a great mystery. So maybe my invitation is as follows: hey materialist friends, come here, let’s work on materialism 2.0! Consciousness is a mystery, but matter is also a mystery. The fact that we can have an intersubjective experience consensus, the fact that we can apply mathematics, that we can measure things... the physical world we take for granted, but it is a great mystery too.Maybe that’s related to your last question: why are we here? Why did spirit decide to incarnate? Being in the flesh may be a great thing if spirit decided to do so.Àlex Gómez-Marín, thank you very much.My pleasure.
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