What are the special challenges, pitfalls, opportunities and rare triumphs of seeking and synthesizing the essence of someone whose passion—quantum physics, number theory, nucleic acids, atomic species, computational design, gravitational phenomena—is so thoroughly foreign to the concerns of everyday life?

How do we learn to speak? What is the connection between language and movement? Join a broad and distinguished panel of biologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, musicians and writers.

Ellen Stofan is the NASA chief scientist, serving as principal advisor on the agency’s science programs. Prior to her appointment, Stofan was vice president of Proxemy Research and an honorary …

Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined? Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment? John Schaefer, scientist Daniel Levitin, and musical artist Bobby McFerrin engage in live performances and cross-cultural demonstrations to illustrate music’s noteworthy interaction with the brain and our emotions.

Creative thought is surely among our most precious and mysterious capabilities. But can powerful computers rival the human brain? As thinking, remembering and innovating become increasingly interwoven with technological advances, what are we capable of? What do we lose? Join Luciano Floridi, John Donoghue, Gary Small and Rosalind Picard for a thought-provoking program about thinking.

A century after Einstein’s mathematics suggested the possibility of black holes, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is finally observing them. The project’s latest achievement is the first image of the …