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What those 'Masters of the Universe' end-credits scenes mean for a potential sequel— and why one almost didn't happen
'Masters of the Universe' director Travis Knight and star Nicholas Galitzine break down those two end-credits scenes — one of which almost didn't get to be in the movie — and what they reveal about a potential second He-Man film.
Why Did Apple Stop Using Titanium For iPhones?
Titanium was a selling point for the iPhone 15 Pro and 16 Pro. Apple dropped it for the 17 Pro without explanation, but the reason makes sense.
Louisiana could use more of Sweden’s centuries-old and beloved fika tradition
A Swede on a boat off Portugal. A Mississippi mother who always had cake. And a word that might change how you spend your afternoons. Jan Risher's Sunday column.
How Howie Mandel turned a panic attack into a mental health movement and helped build a company now worth hundreds of millions
Howie Mandel did a campaign with NOCD, a telehealth app to help spread awareness of OCD. Out of that campaign, Billy Bob Thornton and "celebrity galore" reached out.
Bruno Fernandes scores winner as Portugal beat Chile
Bruno Fernandes scored the decisive goal as Portugal beat Chile 2-1 in a World Cup warm-up fixture.The Manchester United continued his outstanding club form for the national team, sweeping in the seco...
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review: After four months of testing, I can’t part with it
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is the best showcase of consistent excellence and a solid return to innovative streak, despite not being the beefiest warrior in the Android ecosystem.
Gil M Soffer
Scope of work: A former federal prosecutor, Soffer became chairman of Katten in 2024, leading 1,500 attorneys and professionals. Previously, he was Chicago managing partner and co-chaired the firm’s litigation practice.Significant case: He serves as a five-year independent monitor in a global opioid settlement and was previously a DOJ/SEC-appointed corporate compliance monitor in a major Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case.Other contributions: Soffer is on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois' Racial Justice Diversity Committee, is WLS-TV/Channel 7's chief legal analyst and headed the Chicago Bar Foundation Investing in Justice Campaign that raised $1.4 million for pro bono services.
Gallery: Carolina Country Music Fest draws crowds for another year in Myrtle Beach
Locals and visitors alike had their cowboy hats and country music vibes ready to roll on Saturday, June 6, as the Carolina Country Music Fest action took place in Myrtle Beach.
Portugal's Rafael Leão Sent Off For Punching In World Cup Warmup Win Over Chile
Portugal forward Rafael Leão has been sent off for punching an opponent in a 2-1 win over Chile in a World Cup warmup in Lisbon.
Race to Erase MS Gala Honors Disney's Naomi Bulochnikov
Ty Dolla $ign, Richie Sambora and Rachel Platten performed at the 33rd Race to Erase MS Gala, which raised more than $1.8 million.
Was this the season that got away for Glasgow Warriors?
Surrendering a 21-3 lead to the Bulls, when a United Rugby Championship final spot was seemingly within their grasp, was indicative of a season that promised so much and failed to deliver for Glasgow Warriors. When referee Andrew Brace headed to the Bulls posts to award Glasgow a penalty try after the South Africans had illegally halted a maul headed for their line, it looked like the Scots were about to make a statement of intent. At that stage, with 25 minutes on the clock and an 18-point lead, it looked like the Warriors were going to win at a canter.
WEEKEND READ: Confronting rare challenges through science, regulation
A family in Travis County is racing to save their baby from an ultra-rare genetic disease, while two New World screwworm cases have been confirmed in Texas, and the legality of owning human bones.
Bengals reportedly searching for help at an unexpected position
A new report seems to suggest the Bengals were on the hunt for help at a key spot.
Bengals Film Room: Cashius Howell is Money
Cashius Howell was a huge get for the Bengals in Round 2
I used the Motorola Razr Ultra (2026) and the Galaxy Z Flip 7, and I only want one in my pocket
The Motorola Razr Ultra (2026) and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 may share a form factor, but they offer very different experiences.
A total solar eclipse will occur this summer. Everything you need to know
A total solar eclipse will occur on August 12, visible in parts of Greenland, Iceland, Spain and Portugal.
Bengals enjoy embarrassment of riches at QB, too
It's not just wide receiver. The Bengals have the best quarterback room in the NFL, too.
\"Star Wars\" franchise has a rocky road back to relevance [Unscripted column]
I regret having to say it, but my main thought while leaving the new “Star Wars” movie was that Disney is far, far away from a galaxy that contains any
The Hollywood Reporter Women in Entertainment Gala recap
SHIFTER's Emmy Carlos Rayman shares the sights and sounds from The Hollywood Reporter Women In Entertainment Gala in Toronto.
Everything you need to know about that big 'Masters of the Universe' cameo
'Masters of the Universe' star Nicholas Galitzine and director Travis Knight detail how they landed a certain member of He-Man royalty for a cameo in the new sci-fi/fantasy movie.
2 Ohio men, business charged in illegal dumping investigation
Akron residents DeShawn Dixon and Zachary Dupert, along with the business SOS Junk Removal, were indicted on illegal dumping and open burning charges.
Several vehicles damaged as fire spreads to Tri-State business
Local 12 WKRC-TV is the local station for breaking news, weather forecasts, traffic alerts, community news, Cincinnati Bengals, Reds and FC Cincinnati sports updates, and CBS programming for the Cincinnati , Ohio area, including Avondale, Blue Ash, Bond Hill, Camp Washington, Cheviot, Cleves, Colerain Township, Columbia-Tusculum, Corryville, Norwood, Delhi, East Price Hill, Golf Manor, Hyde Park, Lebanon, Loveland, Lower Price Hill, Madeira, Mariemont, Mount Adams, Mount Airy, Mount Healthy, Mount Lookout, Mount Washington, Oakley, Over-The-Rhine, Reading, Sedamsville, Sharonville, Springdale, St. Bernard, South Cumminsville, Symmes Township, Mason, Hamilton, Union Township, Walnut Hills, West Chester, Wyoming, West Price Hill, Westwood, Winton Hills, Alexandria, Bellevue, Covington, Crescent Springs, Erlanger, Fort Mitchell, Fort Thomas, Fort Wright, Florence, Hebron, Highland Heights, Newport, Southgate, Villa Hills, Walton, Aurora, Greendale, and Lawrenceburg.
Brazil women’s under-20s face South Korea this Saturday
The Women’s U-20 National Team faces South Korea in a friendly this Saturday (6), at 7 a.m. (Brasília time), at Estádio Conde Dias Garcia in Aveiro, Portugal. The match is part of a series of thre...
Tupac Is Coming To Stranger Than Heaven And We're As Confused As You Are
Did that Coachella appearance land him the gig?
Capcom's Resident Evil: Code Veronica Remake Is Coming In 2027
It's just Resident Evil: Veronica now.
Looking back: O’Donnell School of Public Health commencement: Center Times Plus, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX
The Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health (OSPH) celebrated its second commencement ceremony on May 13 in the Tom and Lula Gooch Auditorium, marking an exciting milestone for the school and its newest graduates from the Master of Public Health (M.P.H.), Master of Science in Health Informatics (M.S.H.I.), and Master of Science in Clinical Investigation (M.S.C.I.) programs.
Health Brief: The Trump-backed push to put AI in the exam room
Plus: The new legal challenge to ACA marketplace rules
Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services issues health alert for Rockford Lake
Nebraska has issued a health alert for Harmful Algal Blooms, also known as toxic blue-green algae, at Rockford Lake in Gage County on Friday.
Fresno considers dropping Business Journal, Fresno Bee from legal notice requirements
The Fresno City Council tabled an ordinance that would remove the Business Journal and Fresno Bee as named legal notice publications.
2 men, business charged, accused of illegal dumping in Copley
A Summit County grand jury has indicted two men and a junk-removal business accused of illegal dumping in Copley Township, a state official says.
TVLine Asks: Which Not Suitable For Work 'Ship Is Best? Did Criminal Minds Escape Confuse? Was Pop Culture Jeopardy! Semi Too Hard? And More
We tackle the biggest questions from the week in TV: Not Suitable For Work, Pop Culture Jeopardy!, Criminal Minds: Evolution, and much more.
Business sentenced to $500,000, probation for asbestos violations in Saginaw
Applied Partners LLC was sentenced Friday, June 5, to pay a $500,000 fine and to complete a two-year term of probation for the company’s illegal handling of regulated asbestos-containing material (RACM) at a site in Saginaw.
AI business 'operating system' with its own GPU hub planned in Malaysia
Planned Galactic OPC platform pairs AI agents with NVIDIA-powered GPU infrastructure and a physical hub to help entrepreneurs run key business functions.
Norm Lewis to headline Studio Tenn’s ‘One Night Only’ gala
Middle Tennessee’s premier nonprofit professional theatrer company, Studio Tenn, welcomes the return of its annual fundraising gala, “One Night Only: Summer Starlight Serenade” to Liberty Hall at The Factory at
Galaxy S27 Pro To Feature Another Upgrade That’ll Make It Samsung’s Best Seller, But The Galaxy S27 Ultra Is Sadly Being Left Out
A new rumor talks about yet another upgrade making it to the Galaxy S27 Pro, and at a lower price, it’s bound to resonate with buyers
Family Entertainment Thrives As Legoland Invests In Growth
Legoland has invested in more than a new Galacticoaster. They are investing in the guest experience in an attempt to drive growth.
Trump administration’s proposed rule would limit some immigrants’ ability to legally work in the U.S.
The proposal would make it harder for several categories of immigrants -- notably those in the U.S. on humanitarian parole as well as DACA recipients -- to obtain or renew legal work authorization.
Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide Latest: Why Samsung Is Betting Big
New Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide details reveal key specs ahead of July 22 Unpacked release date. Here's what we know and what it means for buyers.
Trump Looms Large Over Upcoming Primary Elections in Washington, DC
WASHINGTON (AP) — The last time Washington, D.C., residents chose a new delegate to Congress and a new mayor in the same election, gas was $1.33 a gallon and George H.W. Bush was president. This fall they will do it again — under starkly different circumstances. As the city heads toward pivotal ...
Senegal: 2026 World Cup Squad, Fixtures and Schedule
Sadio Mané leads Senegal into a fourth FIFA World Cup this summer, still chasing the heights of their 2002 fairytale.The Lions of Teranga reached the quarter-finals on their tournament debut, beating...
Bengals Rookie Spotlight: Tacario Davis
Davis will be expected to help cover tight ends in year one.
US Terrorist Label for Brazil Gangs Risks Higher Business Costs
By Luciana Magalhaes and Ricardo Brito SAO PAULO/Brasilia, June 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. designation of Brazil's biggest criminal groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) starting Friday is likely to increase the risks and costs of doing business in a country where gangs have had years to ...
Trump administration escalates legal push for medical records of trans minors
Parents said in court papers they’re worried that having records disclosed could expose them to retaliation by the Trump administration.
JWST Measures Mass Of Most Distant Dormant Black Hole – Shattering Previous Record By 15 Times
JWST and gravitational lensing allowed scientists to resolve an area in the distant universe equivalent to looking at a "coin on the surface of the Moon."
Legal battle over Trump's $1.8B 'anti-weaponization' fund rages on
'The Anti-Weaponization Fund presents a threat to our constitutional democracy,' Sens. Cory Booker and Bill Cassidy wrote in a court brief.
Spurs enter NBA Finals while sports bets boom in revenue, despite remaining illegal in Texas
LAPD and feds conduct drug-busting operation in fentanyl hotspot MacArthur Park
The Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents are working on a joint operation targeting "illegal narcotics activity" in MarArthur Park, a hotspot for fentanyl sales and use, on Thursday afternoon, authorities said.
Florentino promises galáctico signing on Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká level
The days leading up to Real Madrid’s presidential election have been eventful.Florentino Pérez has reached an agreement with José Mourinho and has also lined up the signings of Konaté (on a free ...
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 to have both Exynos and Snapdragon chips
Which one you get will depend on where you're located, apparently. We've already heard that Samsung would be using the Exynos 2600 SoC in the upcoming...
Scientists just solved a decades-old mystery about the black hole in the middle of our galaxy
They captured an image 100 times deeper and 80 times sharper than previous maps of the region
Wired Found Code For An Unreleased Facial Recognition Feature In Meta's AI App
Meta was previously reported to be exploring facial recognition for its smart glasses.
Would Bengals already trade second-round project?
An interesting name comes up as a Bengals trade candidate.
Samsung Health app is getting a big AI-centric redesign ahead of Galaxy Watch 9 [Gallery]
Samsung is expected to launch its new Galaxy Watch 9 next month and, ahead of that, the Samsung Health app...
Northwestern scientists find long-elusive wind emitting from Milky Way galaxy's central black hole
Scientists have understood for years that black holes should produce wind or streams of gas as they consume matter, but a search for such a wind around the central black hole of the Milky Way galaxy had been coming up fruitless for more than 50 years.
James Webb telescope detects most distant dormant black hole, invisible in all wavelengths and weighing as much as 6 billion suns
JWST found a black hole hiding in a galaxy more than 10 billion light-years away from Earth, and used a cosmic magnifying glass to determine its mass.
Samsung LSI’s Price Gouging Pushes Exynos 2600 To $270/Unit, Forcing Samsung Mobile To Bank On Qualcomm For The Galaxy Z Flip 8
Samsung Mobile is reportedly reducing the share of the Exynos 2600 chip within the upcoming Galaxy Z Flip 8 amid runaway silicon costs.
2027 Dodge Charger Daytona Is $12,500 More Expensive Than It Is In 2026 For No Apparent Reason
Usually, when pricing changes this drastically between model years, it's because of some major updates, but that definitely isn't the case here.
Marshall Milton ANC review: Making the rare case for premium on-ear headphones
Marshall's latest headphones are like its Major and Monitor models had a baby.
Website reviews Barba's spell at Galo so far
Argentine coach Eduardo Domínguez has completed 100 days in charge of Atlético-MG. The assessment of this start to his tenure is considered positive behind the scenes. The coach secured the team a p...
Ferrari And HP Made A Vivid Red Laptop With A Transparent Base Panel
Only 4,999 units of the HP Scuderia Ferrari AI PC will be available.
Run Google's Gemini LLMs right on your Mac with the new AI Edge Gallery
Google has released its AI Edge Gallery app on the Mac for the first time, allowing AI fans to run its Gemini large language models (LLMs) locally, without the need for an internet connection.
Photos and Video: The Gilded Age Cast, Daryl Roth, Yoshiki Honored by Entertainment Community Fund
Performers included Lea Michele, Julie Benko, Ben Levi Ross, Primo Thee Ballerino, Jonathan Burke, Stark Sands, and more.
Mets Daily Prospect Report, 6/4/26: Games galore
Catch up on all the Mets prospects in yesterday’s minor league action!
Samsung's Updated Health App Unsurprisingly Comes With New AI-Powered Features
Samsung will roll out an update for its Health app before launching its new Galaxy Watches.
L.A. Dance Project's 'City of Dance' puts free dance in public spaces
Choreographer Benjamin Millepied's L.A. Dance Project is taking its work to the streets of Los Angeles over a period of two weeks with free performances at LACMA's David Geffen Galleries, Hollywood Forever Cemetery and Hollyhock House at Barnsdall Art Park.
Samsung monthly updates: June 2026 security patch gets detailed
Samsung has detailed its June 2026 security patch update for Galaxy smartphones, tablets, and other Android-based devices.
Man City consider legal action after Haaland claim
After a candidate in Real Madrid's presidential election unveils an Erling Haaland shirt on live TV, Manchester City dismiss the suggestion their striker will move to Spain.
Nintendo Will Launch A Switch 2 With Replaceable Batteries In The EU
Nintendo is preparing to sell a special version of the Switch 2 in the EU with swappable batteries.
D-Backs 0, Dodgers 7: Beat down in Downtown
TL;DR: Zac Gallen labored, the bullpen struggled, and the offense was nowhere to be found
Google AI Edge Gallery launches to macOS
In addition to Google AI Edge Gallery, the company also released the Gemma 4 12B model and the Google AI Edge Eloquent dictation app for the Mac.
Orange County business owner supplied Iran with U.S. technology, federal prosecutors say
A Newport Coast man running a business out of Iran was arrested and charged with violating federal law Wednesday after prosecutors say he spent years illegally importing American technology into the country, including to Iran's nuclear establishment, without notifying the U.S. government.
Samsung Introduces Next-Gen Galaxy Watch Features for AI-Powered Everyday Health Companion
New update transforms the user experience from passive tracking to proactive guidance with a suite of personalised, intuitive daily insights
Samsung Introduces Next-Gen Galaxy Watch Features for AI-Powered Everyday Health Companion
New update transforms the user experience from passive tracking to proactive guidance with a suite of personalised, intuitive daily insights
Kemp’s gas tax suspension ends, local business plans for high prices
For more than two months, the suspension has saved Georgia drivers 33 cents per gallon on regular gas and 37 cents per gallon on diesel fuel.
Samsung Introduces Next-Gen Galaxy Watch Features for AI-Powered Everyday Health Companion
New update transforms the user experience from passive tracking to proactive guidance with a suite of personalized, intuitive daily insights
Samsung Introduces Next-Gen Galaxy Watch Features for AI-Powered Everyday Health Companion
New update transforms the user experience from passive tracking to proactive guidance with a suite of personalized, intuitive daily insights
Local marijuana business sees growth since starting recreational sales
Aug. 6 will mark two years since recreational marijuana started being sold legally in Ohio.
Demand for second mental health review for man accused of killing Cleveland officer
The FOX 8 I-Team has uncovered a new legal battle over the mental health of the suspect in the murder of Cleveland Police Officer Jamieson Ritter.
3 Investment Trends Shaping Behavioral Health Deals in 2026
This is an exclusive BHB+ article. Despite some major deals in the behavioral health sector in 2026, the year’s dealmaking outlook is still somewhat muted
ENTERTAINMENT: ‘Music’ at Wildwood; ‘Aftermaths’ exhibit opens at AMFA Saturday
"Aftermaths: Mat Collishaw," featuring the latest film from British painter, photographer, sculptor and filmmaker Mat Collishaw, opens Saturday in the Fine Arts Club New Media Gallery at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
Biggest diesel shock since 2022 deals another blow to farmers
In Illinois, the top US soybean-producing state, farm diesel averaged a record $5.41 a gallon at the start of May, nearly double the price a year earlier.
Analysis | What to know about Trump’s immunity deal with the IRS
It’s “a legal absurdity,” said one expert.
Short-sighted: John Ternus behind Apple Vision project refocuses
Apple's head-mounted hardware plans are slowly being cut, reportedly by new CEO John Ternus himself, with Vision Air said to be killed off alongside Display glasses.
'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' Remains Atop U.K. Home Entertainment Sales Chart Through June 3
Universal’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie remained No. 1 on the weekly Official Film Chart — the U.K. home entertainment sales chart — through June 3 due to digital transactions. Amazon MGM Studios’ former chart topper Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling as a lone astronaut on a mission to save humanity, remained at No. … Continue reading "‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ Remains Atop U.K. Home Entertainment Sales Chart Through June 3"
‘Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra’ confirmed, likely leaving Samsung’s most interesting foldable with a boring name
Samsung is planning two Galaxy Z Fold 8 models for launch this year, and one is confirmed to have “Ultra”...
Battles in the Nation’s Courts Impacting Small Business
The NFIB Small Business Legal Center issued briefs on several cases impacting small businesses, including lawsuit abuse, free speech regulations, and more.
Joe Burrow backs BODYARMOR FIT launch as sparkling sports drink targets everyday active hydration
BODYARMOR FIT launched as a sparkling sports drink with electrolytes, caffeine, and zero sugar for everyday active hydration beyond workouts, championed by Bengals QB Joe Burrow.
Reps. Mejia, Cleaver Demand Trump Administration Automatically Refund Illegal Tariffs Collected from U.S. Small Businesses and Provide Refunds to American Consumers
Reps. Mejia, Cleaver Demand Trump Administration Automatically Refund Illegal Tariffs Collected from U.S. Small Businesses and Provide Refunds to American Consumers Washington D.C. – Today, U.S. Representatives Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) and Emanuel Cleaver, II (D-MO) led dozens of lawmakers in demanding the Trump administration make consumers eligible for tariff refunds and implement an automatic refund[...]
Algal blooms explained: How scientists are helping spot them sooner
Algal blooms can seem to appear overnight. A stretch of ocean that looked clear days earlier can suddenly appear discolored and sometimes pose risks to ecosystems and human health. But scientists say ...
Apple Announces Europe's First Developer Center
Apple today announced it will open Europe's first Apple Developer Center in Berlin later this year. The facility joins existing Developer Centers in Bengaluru, Cupertino, Shanghai, and Singapore. Apple said the Berlin center, located in Mitte district, will offer developers throughout Europe in-person sessions, workshops, and one-on-one appointments in multiple languages, with consultation areas and dedicated labs staffed by Apple experts.
SFA business students gain global edge through immersive study abroad tour of Spain and Portugal
NACOGDOCHES, Texas –– Nearly 50 students from Stephen F. Austin State University’s Nelson Rusche College of Business participated in an intensive, faculty-led study abroad program in Spain and Portugal May 10-21.Led by Dr. Matthew Lindsey, chair of the Department of Management and Marketing, and Dr. Mikhail Kouliavtsev, chair of the Department of Economics and Finance, the experiential learning trip bridged classroom business theory with real-world international operations across the Iberian Peninsula.
From spider silk to science: a new way to access hidden fungal diversity
A new study from Thailand demonstrates that the debris-heavy webs of orb-weaving spiders can serve as natural, non-destructive tools for collecting and culturing viable environmental fungi. Through the isolation of living organisms, this innovative approach has already uncovered potentially new, undocumented fungal diversity within tropical rice fields.
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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