As long ago as the early 19th century, the poet Keats bemoaned the washing away of the world’s beauty and mystery in the wake of natural philosophy’s reductionist insights—its tendency …

Disruptive technologies uproot culture, can precipitate wars and even topple empires. By this measure, human history has seen nothing like the internet. From social upheaval and ever-shifting privacy standards to self-driving cars and networked groceries, this eye-opening program provides a stunning glimpse of what’s around the corner.

As physicists attempt to answer some of science’s biggest questions about the universe, they are testing the limits of experimental and observational science itself. In this program leading physicists, astronomers, …

Acknowledging the scientists who blazed intellectual trails before him, Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen a little further it was by standing on the shoulders of giants.” In this special annual series, we invite our audience to stand on the shoulders of a modern-day giant. This year, we are honored to present an address by a titan of physics, Barry Barish.

Immanuel Kant, who coined the term genius in the 1700s, defined it as the rare capacity to independently understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person. Since then, the spectrum of abilities that we call genius has widened, but pivotal questions remain: What exactly is genius?

For all that Darwin contributed to our understanding of the biological world, he was haunted by one vexing question: How does the incremental process of evolution suddenly produce, say, humans—animals who walk upright, communicate through language, and possess the brainpower to travel to the moon?