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Invisibilia: Should Wild Bears Be Feared Or Befriended?

Rogers hand feeds June, a 300-plus-pound pregnant black bear. Derek Montgomery for NPR hide caption

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Derek Montgomery for NPR

Invisibilia: Should Wild Bears Be Feared Or Befriended?

June 8, 2017 • A photographer who walks deep into the woods in search of a wild bear wonders if his curiosity will overcome his fear. Can bears and humans co-exist?

Invisibilia: Should Wild Bears Be Feared Or Befriended?

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Why Reality Is Not A Video Game — And Why It Matters

March 9, 2017 • There's a philosophical discussion considering the possibility that we are in a computer simulation, run by posthumans. Marcelo Gleiser asks: Why would an advanced species waste their time this way?

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What If Evolution Bred Reality Out Of Us?

September 6, 2016 • Commentator Adam Frank talks with professor Donald Hoffman about Hoffman's big radical idea: Evolution and objective reality have almost nothing to do with each other.

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How Real Is Reality?

January 5, 2016 • Reality seems pretty stubborn, pretty fixed — and pretty much independent of whatever is going on in your head. But is it, really? Astrophysicist Adam Frank explores the scientific debate.

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If You Don't Know You Are Held Captive, Does It Matter?

June 10, 2015 • Commentator Marcelo Gleiser examines whether there is truth to the phrase "ignorance is bliss," delving into the nature of physical reality and the limits of knowledge.

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Could Playfulness Be Embedded In The Universe?

April 13, 2014 • In a recent essay, David Graeber develops a playful panpsychism according to which play is the organizing principle of reality. Alva Noë suggests, more darkly, that it is work that organizes us all.

Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, a man living in someone else's dream. The 1998 movie The Truman Show asks us to look at experience and reality with fresh eyes. Melinda Sue Gordon/The Kobal Collection/Paramount hide caption

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Melinda Sue Gordon/The Kobal Collection/Paramount

Opinion

The Limits Of Simulation

February 28, 2014 • Could it be that we are living in a giant, convincing simulation? If so, we've got a lot to be mad about, says commentator Alva Noë.

Is Freedom Just An Illusion? Maybe We Don't Want To Know

A computer designed by hobbyists to look like a brain on display at a Berlin fair in 2012. What happens when we go from crude models to complete working simulations of this all-important organ? Britta Pedersen/DPA/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Britta Pedersen/DPA/AFP/Getty Images

Opinion

Is Freedom Just An Illusion? Maybe We Don't Want To Know

February 26, 2014 • As we learn more about the brain, we should ask whether learning too much might, ultimately, compromise our freedom. Simulating reality could be a threat to reality, warns commentator Marcelo Gleiser.

Science Sees Its Own Reality In Life's Hall Of Mirrors

Swarms of locusts in Madagascar, or clouds of elementary particles, without sound, odor, flavor or color? Reality is harder to pin down than you first might think. Bilal Tarabey/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Bilal Tarabey/AFP/Getty Images