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Women’s sports are booming for the Texas Longhorns — investment is the reason why
After the Longhorns won a second national title in softball, women's basketball coach Vic Schaefer explains why women's sports are booming at Texas.
Women gather in Jackson to support heart health and maternal care
The American Heart Association's Go Red for Women luncheon in Jackson focused on heart health, maternal care, and CPR training, with advocates sharing personal stories to inspire change.
Meet America’s 43 Self-Made Billionaire Queens Of Capitalism. Plus: Questions To Ask Before Turning Your Hobby Into A Business
Welcome to this week’s ForbesWomen newsletter, which every Thursday brings news about the world’s top female entrepreneurs, leaders and investors straight to your inbox.
E-bike safety; lung cancer treatment and prevention; keeping CMA Festival attendees safe; plus other stories with Vanderbilt Health sources
WKRN News 2 interviewed Jeffrey Upperman, MD, FACS, Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatric Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief of Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, about e-bike related injuries following the recent death of a Brentwood High student and a proposal to require safety training before students could ride a bike on a school campus in Williamson County. Fabien Maldonado, MD, MSc,Professor of Medicine and Thoracic Surgery, was on WTVF News Channel 5‘s live studio show, “Openline,” with host Ben Hall, to discuss lung cancer, treatment and prevention. WSMV’s “Today In Nashville” program hosted Vanderbilt LifeFlight paramedic/flight nurse practitioner Tony Smith to talk about safety for the CMA Festival. The New York Times reporter Carl Zimmer interviewed James Crowe, MD, Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics, for a story about the race to find vaccines and treatments as Ebola spreads. The Vanderbilt Health News release about the pilot clinical trial conducted by Vanderbilt Health and Cumberland Pharmaceuticals Inc., that confirms the safety of ifetroban and supports the further development of the drug to prevent cancer metastasis, was picked up by Reuters, Stock Titan,and others. Women We Admire has named Lee Ann Liska, President and Chief Operating Officer, to its list of top women leaders of Nashville for 2026. Radiology Business, Aunt Minnie, Bioengineer, and Imaging Technology News covered the study from Consuelo Wilkins, MD, MSCI, the Mildred Thornton Stahlman Professor in Rural Health and professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, that found Black and Hispanic people, while known to be far more apt to have dementia, are significantly less apt than other racial and ethnic groups to show Alzheimer’s pathology on brain scans. STAT News interviewed Deva Sharma, MD, Transfusion Medicine & Hematology-Oncology, for a story about more patients requesting unvaccinated blood and what it means for the medical system at large. Yahoo! Health reporter Korin Miller interviewed Gitanjali Srivastava, MD, Director of Obesity Medicine, for a story about how semaglutide and tirzepatide compare. William Schaffner, MD, Professor of Preventive Medicine, was quoted by several news outlets about public health issues, including: NBC News (new COVID vaccinations); Medscape (pneumonia and sepsis); and CNN (protection from contagious viruses). Shelbyville Times-Gazette is repurposing Jessica Pasley’s July 2025 Vanderbilt Health News story on tick-borne illnesses as a front-page story.
Small Business and AI Adoption - Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
by Raymond J. Keating – The adoption of AI among small business is accelerating, and runs particularly higher among employer firms. These are among the findings in the first report in a new research series, Small Business in the Age of AI, from the JPMorganChase Institute. The report, “Understanding the use of AI among small […]
MISS shifts the ecosystem of shark science
The program creates a space where women of color thrive as they dive into marine research.
Platner’s latest controversy; Pratt and Hilton await California results: Join Friday’s Whole Hog
Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner (D) is facing fresh scrutiny after a report from The New York Times detailed new allegations from women about his past behavior in relationships. He has pushed b…
I worked with the USMNT. This is the biggest mental challenge of the World Cup
This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here. Travis Thomas is a mental performance coach who was the leadership and team dynamics coach for the United States Men’s National Team during the 2022 World Cup. One of the moments when it became evident to everyone that the World Cup is just a different beast was our game against Iran in 2022 in Qatar. We had one game left in our group, which happened to be against Iran. We needed to win that game to advance. Iran only needed a tie to advance, and we would have been...
After big offensive effort, Giants look to quell Cubs' momentum
The San Francisco Giants have put together some stellar offensive efforts in the past week, while the Chicago Cubs are hoping a dramatic rally will change their recent fortunes.
Sexism and bullying keeping women out of careers in sport, MPs told
Women coaches routinely overlooked, undermined and denied opportunities despite qualifications, say experts
Texas defeats Texas Tech for second consecutive WCWS national championship, Teagan Kavan again wins Most Outstanding Player
Unlike last year, Texas Tech could not force a winner-take-all Game 3 against Texas in the Women's College World Series championship.
Graham Platner to hold Maine rally with Rep. Ro Khanna as scandals shake up campaign
Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner is hosting his first major campaign event since media reports surfaced that he previously exchanged sexually explicit text messages with several women while he was married
Trump plans pedestrian bridge between Lincoln Memorial and Potomac River
The president and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum cast the proposed “Trump promenade” as fulfilling an early-20th-century vision to connect the National Mall with the nearby waterfront.
Kupcho seizes slim lead in US Women's Open at Riviera
Jennifer Kupcho made a hot start in firing a five-under-par 66 for a one-shot lead in the first round of the US Women's Open at Riviera Country Club on Thursday.The American finished with seven birdies and two bogeys and a one-shot lead over South Korean Kim Sei-young.
Texas claims second straight WCWS title over Texas Tech
Kayden Henry homered to lead Texas to a 4-1 victory over Texas Tech on Thursday night at the Women's College World Series for a second straight national championship.
Report details allegations of unsettling behavior toward women by Graham Platner
Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is facing allegations of unsettling and in least one case physically threatening behavior toward women he dated, according to a report published Thursday by The New York Times.
Trump says promenade will be built connecting Lincoln Memorial to Potomac River
President Donald Trump said Thursday that a new walkway will be built connecting the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, to the Potomac River.
‘He hated women’: Explosive abuse, new Nazi tattoo allegations from exes rock Platner's campaign
Graham Platner's ex-girlfriends allege rape fantasies, violent episodes and heavy drinking in new report as Maine Democrat faces mounting scandals.
Psst…Halle Berry would like to talk about your vaginal health
Halle Berry, an investor in NellaSpec, talks about a new speculum and why she'll keep speaking out about women's health.
Millions of Women Are Syncing Workouts to Their Cycle, but Has the Trend Raced Ahead of Science?
Women everywhere are syncing workouts to their cycle— but has the trend raced ahead of the research? Here’s what we know.
Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior
The Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine could be charming, women said in interviews, but some found his actions intimidating and disturbing.
Melinda French Gates donates $215 million to improve women's health worldwide
Philanthropist Melinda French Gates will expand her giving to improve women’s health globally, pledging another $215 million to support contraceptive access
Melinda French Gates donates $215 million to improve women's health worldwide
The new funding pushes Melinda French Gates' donations for women's health over $600 million in the past two years.
Nottingham Forest appoint Mallinson as new head coach
Nottingham Forest have appointed Tom Mallinson as the new head coach of their women’s team on a three-year deal.WSL Full-Time were informed of the news via an official media update from The Tricky T...
No excuses as Wilkinson insists Wales will be ready
Head coach Rhian Wilkinson says Wales cannot let travel chaos affect their performance in Friday's Women's World Cup qualifier in Montenegro.
Fitbit Air Can Turn Into a Watch and the Trick is Super Easy
When we talk about devices like the new Fitbit Air having their momentt, we can't do so without mentioning the fact that it doesn't have a screen. This is a fitness and health tracker that is...
Melinda French Gates pledges $215M to advance women’s health worldwide
Melinda French Gates will expand her giving to improve women’s health globally, pledging another $215 million.
New Dignity Health program helps identify mental health risks for pregnant and postpartum women
A new maternal mental health initiative in the Sacramento region is already helping connect pregnant and postpartum women with critical support services, according to Dignity Health.
Melinda Gates pledges another $215 million to improve women's health around the world
In the past two years, the philanthropist's donations for women's health have exceeded $600 million.
Gender identity, or women’s sports? There is no middle ground.
It is June again. That means another collision between Pride Month and Title IX Month, and another round in the clash between biological sex and gender identity. As they have been for years, studen…
A study of 8,300 older adults revealed a surprising salt habit
A large study of older adults in Brazil found that adding extra salt at the table is still a common habit, especially among men. While too much salt is linked to serious health problems and faster cognitive decline, researchers discovered that women’s salt-shaking habits were tied more closely to lifestyle and diet.
Melinda French Gates invests $215 million in health. Inside her surprising choice
Melinda French Gates is giving $215 million to improve women’s health. Her first-ever grant to benefit menopause and women in midlife.
Bob Jones grad/Vandy AD Candice Storey Lee named Sports Business Journal Athletic Director of the Year
From the halls of Bob Jones High School in Madison, Dr. Candice Storey Lee has become one of the most influential and successful women in college sports. Now, she is one of the most successful people in college athletics. Lee, Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor for Athletics and University Affairs and athletic director, was recently honored as […]
The Knicks’ grimy Game 1 win, plus a World Cup retrospective
The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Embrace the grime today. Coming up: 🗽 New York’s moxie 🌬️ Sabalenka’s collapse 👨🏻🦲 Wildest World Cup moments One thought raced through my head every time I watched a New York Knicks possession in the fourth quarter last night: These dudes are grimy. I mean that as a huge compliment. There’s grit, and then there’s grime. Every bucket, every rebound, every screen oozed difficulty, as if each player was...
Mexicana Emprende Program helps women grow business acumen
Through thirteen required lessons, participants learn foundational business concepts, including financial management, operations, marketing, and strategic planning.
Vote in our L.A. Sports Hall of Fame (USC edition)
Introducing the L.A. Times Sports Report Hall of Fame, where readers vote for Hall of Famers in various categories.
Melinda French Gates on Menopause, Midlife, and the Women's Health Gap
Melinda French Gates talks menopause, mental health, and the systemic gaps in women's care.
Melinda French Gates donates $215 million to improve women’s health worldwide
The new funding announced Thursday pushes French Gates’ donations for women’s health over $600 million in the past two years.
Melinda French Gates donates $215 million to improve women's health worldwide
Melinda French Gates is expanding her efforts to improve women's health worldwide, pledging $215 million for contraceptive access and maternal care, as well as initiatives for middle-age women
Opinion | Melinda French Gates: America Needs a Menopause Revolution
Too many women walk out of their doctors’ office with no diagnosis, no treatment and no plan.
A Celebration Worth a Thousand Words 🇮🇹📸 No. 7 in Best FIFA World Cup™ Moments
At the 1982 FIFA World Cup Final, Marco Tardelli scored a crucial goal for Italy against West Germany before unleashing one of the most iconic celebrations in sports history. His emotional sprint and unforgettable scream captured the joy, pressure, and passion of winning a World Cup.
Scotland: 2026 World Cup Squad, Fixtures and Schedule
Scotland visit North America for the FIFA World Cup this summer, ending a 28-year absence from the tournament’s biggest stage and giving the Tartan Army the moment they have been dreaming of since F...
South Africa: 2026 World Cup Squad, Fixtures and Schedule
South Africa head into the 2026 FIFA World Cup with momentum after securing qualification and returning to the tournament for the first time since 2010.South Africa earned their place by finishing top...
Women are the first caregivers in this Ebola outbreak and the most at risk
Women in eastern Congo are often the first caregivers when family members fall ill.
How Ukraine-Russia tension hangs over French Open semi-finals
Russia's war in Ukraine will provide an unavoidable backdrop to the French Open women's semi-finals - and possibly the final.
Women's College World Series Game 1: Texas surges past Texas Tech early for easy 7-3 win
We've got a rematch of last year's championship series. Will Texas Tech softball avenge the loss?
Texas vs. Texas Tech softball score, live updates: Women's College World Series Game 1
We've got a rematch of last year's championship series. Will Texas Tech softball avenge the loss?
Guardians proving to be a threat to the Yankees, Women’s College World Series preview & an early look at the trade deadline
Aryna Sabalenka says she 'just want to quit tennis right now' after French Open loss to Diana Shnaider
The women's No. 1 is out of the 2026 French Open.
US Ignite Launches SURGE, a National Science Foundation-Supported Initiative to Empower Regional Innovation Coalitions Nationwide
“SURGE provides regional coalitions with structure, guidance, and connections in a peer learning environment. This new program is meant for both existing regional coalitions and leaders who are building new cross-sector partnerships.” -L.Arias, US Ignite Supporting U.S. Regional Growth & Entrepreneurship (SURGE) Convert regional momentum into results! WASHINGTON, June 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- US Ignite officially launched the Supporting U.S. Regional Growth & Entrepreneurship (SURGE) Program
SGMC Health Foundation Receives Transformative Gift from Stalvey Family for Women & Infants Center
The SGMC Health Foundation announces a generous donation from the Stalvey family, owners of Ace Electric, Inc., in support of its Women & Infants Center.
‘Marathon’ Season 2 Launch Was Fumbled At The Worst Possible Moment
Marathon just launched season 2 but it ran into immediate server issues that made the game unplayable for most of the day.
'Survivor 50' players name the best moment of the season
'Survivor 50' players name the best moment of the season, and while one clear winning answer emerges, get ready for a few twists in the replies.
Explore the science behind optical illusions at Orlando Science Center
Prepare to have your mind blown and your senses boggled with a dazzling new exhibit at Orlando Science Center. In "Phenomena: The Exhibition," visitors will gain a deeper understanding of the science behind illusions and the mechanisms that govern human perception. An interactive journey with over 20 stunning and immersive illusions, "Phenomena: The Exhibition" will
Elections to top science bodies test Croatia’s gender equality in research
Croatia’s track-record on gender equality in science has been both questioned and lauded in recent months, following both bad and good news on the topic. On the one hand, a senior awards committee was announced without a single woman researcher included. On the other, the national science academy welcomed its first cohort of fellows with more women than men.Members of the committee, which gives national awards recognising scientific achievement, are proposed by the ministry of science and endorsed by the parliament. The current line-up does include a woman, but she is culture minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek rather than a researcher. Even then, she didn’t make it into the photograph released to announce the appointments on April 16. “The image speaks a thousand words,” says Tanja Rudež, a science journalist for Jutarnji List newspaper. “I am surprised that none of these men, all well-known scientists, saw a problem with the fact that there was not a single successful female scientist on the committee,” she told Science|Business.Ivan Đikić, a prominent Croatian biochemist based at Goethe University Medical School, commented on LinkedIn that the news illustrated a “sad truth” about the state of science in Croatia.“It [. . .] reveals a system where women, despite contributing a substantial share of high-quality, internationally competitive science, are systematically excluded from the very processes that determine recognition and influence,” he wrote. Some 60% of researchers in Croatia are women, according to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, and they perform well in international competitions. For example, of the 12 European Research Council (ERC) grants awarded to Croatian researchers, seven went to women.“So how is it possible that decision-making bodies are still dominated by men over 60, while not a single female ERC laureate is involved in the selection process?” asked Đikić. “This is not a marginal oversight; it is a structural failure.” The ministry of science did not reply to a request for comment. The awards committee is not unusual. For example, a scientific advisory body announced by the ministry of demographics in April comprises 35 men and five women. The board of the Croatian Science Foundation, newly appointed by the parliament, is a little better, with five men and two women, but still unequal. “This is especially significant because such bodies do not merely distribute prestige. They shape research priorities, funding allocation and long-term scientific development,” Marija Lugarić, chair of the parliament’s committee on gender equality, told Science|Business. “Representation here matters not only symbolically, but materially.”Referring to the awards committee and the board of the science foundation, Lugarić says that while both bodies were appointed by parliament, neither met the minimum 40% gender balance threshold that Croatian law and EU guidelines expressly recommend for public bodies.Đikić wants to see EU institutions put pressure on the government to ensure basic standards of fairness, transparency and democratic governance in science policy are met. “Meaningful change will not come without pressure,” he wrote. “It must intensify both within Croatia and at the level of European institutions. Anything less undermines the credibility of Europe’s commitment to excellence and inclusion in science.”Rudež also underlined the importance of talking and writing about this topic, “because public opinion in Croatia does influence changes in the status and visibility of women in science.”The European Commission has not yet responded to a request for comment.Good news from the academyA more positive story came from the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts on 21 May, with the announcement of seven new women fellows and five men. This is the first time in the academy’s 165-year history that women have outnumbered men in a new intake.One of the new fellows, two-time ERC grantee Iva Tolić, credits the academy leadership with trying to be more modern and inclusive, representing the whole community better. “The academy is really aware that so far, before this election, there were very few women,” she told Science|Business. “So, they are actively trying to make this more equal.”Related articlesExplained: How the MSCA is close to achieving gender balanceCall for EU to leverage academic freedom in global talent raceRudež is more cautious, noting that despite the academy’s “breakthrough this year [. . .] it is still a predominantly male institution, with only 18% women.”This reflects a wider imbalance in Croatia’s research landscape. “The key levers of power in science are still in the hands of men,” she went on. “For example, all 14 rectors of private and public universities are men.”Similarly, Lugarić says a structural glass ceiling still exists in Croatian science, which is “most visible precisely where power is exercised.”She cites data from the Commission’s She Figures 2024 report, which shows that Croatia ranks second in the EU for gender equality in research and innovation overall, with an equality index of 79.6 out of 100. It is in the top five for women’s career advancement, participation in research; representation across all research sectors and for scientific publications.In stark contrast, it ranks second to last when it comes to women in decision-making positions in science. “This is not a coincidence,” Lugarić says. “It is a structural pattern.”Informal barriersThe persistent under-representation of women in the highest structures of Croatia’s academies, boards, award committees and leadership positions is not down to formal barriers, Lugarić says, but arises from more subtle obstacles such as “informal networks, persistent expectations regarding traditional gender roles and the unequal distribution of care responsibilities.”Tolić would like to see more support for young women in terms of affordable housing and child support, and higher salaries. Currently, she says, salaries in science stay low for the first 10-15 years, while housing and spaces in kindergarten are limited and expensive. “You have to work a lot, you get very little money, so it’s not great to have a family in this situation,” she says.But despite the challenges, Tolić is optimistic, saying that gender equality in research in Croatia is “definitely improving and going in the right direction.” The situation is particularly promising in biology, she adds, where most full professors, heads of department and deans of faculties are women. Lugarić, too, see the glass ceiling “very slowly, cracking,” and cites the academy election as an example that structural change is possible. Yet the situation in the national awards committee is a “stark reminder that without a conscious, systemic commitment to gender balance, progress will remain slow and uneven.”
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science
With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!
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