When a language advances and adds a third term to its lexicon for color, the third term is always red.

The mammalian brain evolved exquisite place memory because that was essential for survival. This is why squirrels have such a good memory for where they buried their nuts.

The brain has an attentional mode called the "mind wandering mode" that was only recently identified. This is when thoughts move seamlessly from one to another, often to unrelated thoughts, without you controlling where they go. This brain state acts as a neural reset button, allowing us to come back to our work with a refreshed perspective. Different people find they enter this mode in different ways: reading, a walk in nature, looking at art, meditating, and napping. A 15-minute nap can produce the equivalent of a 10-point boost in IQ.

Most of what we know we don't really know first hand. I've never seen a cancer cell. But I trust this community of experts who have, so I believe that cancer exists. But we trust these experts, and we trust that the experts have a system of checks and balances and self-correction. And we have to insist that experts have certain certifications. They're not perfect. Every once in awhile there's an engine falls off the wing of a plane, or a tax audit happens and you find out your expert made a mistake. But it's a pretty good system. It's the best system we've got.

The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.

Librarians are more important than ever before ... are uniquely qualified to help all of us separate the digital wheat from the chaff, to help us understand the reliability of the data we encounter.

When a language advances and adds a third term to its lexicon for color, the third term is always red.