When we try to get rid of a bad habit, whether it involves food or drugs or gambling, it often seems like we’re fighting ourselves inside. The reality’s not far off: Addiction twists the reward pathways of the brain to keep addicts tied to whatever gets them high.

World Science Festival co-founder Brian Greene and seven-time Emmy Award–winner Alan Alda muse on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in a post-performance discussion after a reading of Alda’s play “Dear Albert.”

Thirty-five years ago string theory took physics by storm, promising the coveted unified theory of nature’s forces that Einstein valiantly sought but never found. In the intervening decades, string theory …

The World Science Festival’s Pioneers in Science program gives high school students from around the globe rare and intimate access to some of the world’s most renowned scientists in a …

Why are we drawn to symmetry? Because it provides order in a seemingly chaotic world? Because our brains are the product of the very same laws that yield the flower, the snowflake and the solar system?

What is time? Isaac Newton described it as absolute, but Einstein proved that time is relative, and, shockingly, that time and space are intricately interwoven. Now recent work in string theory and quantum gravity suggests that space and time may not be fundamental. If this is true, what new picture of reality will emerge?