Problems Science

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Over 1 million copies sold in North America “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street Journal “Fascinating.”—TIME ...

Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us―and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem.

A beauty and mental health expert exposes how Western society has controlled the narrative on feminine aesthetics, and breaks down the science and psychology of beauty to help women feel more confident. What is beauty? Who gets to determine who is beautiful? What happens when you fall outside of...

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America PRAISE FOR THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM SERIES: “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street...

I’m a pixie. If there was a level zero of supernaturals, I’d be on the sub-basement level. I’m not super-strong or fast or crazy-smart, and the little bit of pixie magic I do have is limited to the most basic things that any human street magician can do. So when a pack of coyote shifters and their Alpha start hunting me and threatening the only remaining family I have left, I realize I’m going to need some paranormal help to fight them off. I do the only sane thing I can think to do. I flee to Moonhaven Cove and beg help from the local PNW council and the town’s sheriff.

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America PRAISE FOR THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM SERIES: “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street...

The most famous problem in philosophy of mind has been built on a picture of matter that physics abandoned a hundred years ago. Once you remove that picture, the problem turns inside out. For thirty years, philosophers have wrestled with the hard problem of consciousness: how does physical matter give rise to subjective experience? The question feels urgent, even unanswerable. But The Hard Problem of Matter argues that the question has been holding the equation upside down. Atoms are not things. The world is not built out of stuff. This isn't mysticism. It's what the founders of quantum ...

This program is read by Rosalind Chao, who stars as Ye Wenjie in the Netflix adaptation, 3 Body Problem. WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Over 1 million copies sold in North America “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The...

From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of human memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.

A marine biologist makes the discovery of a lifetime when called to rescue the inhabitants of a small Maine island being menaced by a giant, glowing jellyfish in this richly imagined, wholly original debut. Dr. Jo Ness prefers jellyfish to people. Her best friend, Aldo, was the exception, but he...

A powerful investigation into plastic’s impact on human health and the environment, and how we can fight back.

Four disembodied cat heads drift through deep space in Life Helmets, searching for their missing bodies. A puppy head who has never had a body searches with them. The soup is stirring in the wrong direction. The quest continues. Whiskerfluff is the captain because someone has to be. Mittens is the navigator who feels phantom paws he cannot explain. Cookie Kitty is the engineer whose soup has become an eighteen-chapter emergency. Skeedootle is a puppy head sealed in a Life Helmet calibrated for a species she does not belong to, and she is the bravest creature on the ship.

A 2026 Audie Awards finalist for Best Science Fiction! The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! This program is read by Jess Hong, who plays Jin Cheng in 3 Body Problem. Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America. "[Jess] Hong, who stars in the...

Thirty years after the destruction of Earth, World War Three still rages between the Russian Federation and the United States in the depths of space. Thatch Allensworth, a decorated sergeant, struggles to maintain his personal relationships between deployments. Faced against terrifying new weapons, a relentless enemy, solar system wide combat, and an anti-romantic lover, Thatch only has his friends Stockton, Chuck, McKenzie, and O’Con to keep him from spiraling into alcoholism and madness.

Own an unruly horse? Thinking about purchasing a horse but don't exactly know what to expect once you do? Ever wondered what and how a horse thinks? Mark Rashid tells stories that provide horse owners and potential buyers with the best training solutions - straight from the horse's mouth. By considering the horse's point of view, he explores a variety of solutions to common training problem like head tossing, trailer loading, mounting problems, and more.

What would you pay to have a wife who doesn't argue or nag? What would you pay for a husband who's actually in shape? What would you pay to have a clean garage? And what would you pay to be able to get up every morning when you wanted to? The problem is you can't pay for these things as they cannot be bought in stores. But they are definitely attainable in life. The only question is whether you are going to give up your current pursuit of traditional economic standards of living to attain them instead.

01011001 01101111... This is how the message arrives. Not with a greeting, but with a death sentence, decoded by SETI from a tightbeam transmission in 2025. It is the first hint that humanity is not alone. It is the last warning they will ever receive. It began with ‘Oumuamua. The anomalous interstellar object that tumbled through our solar system in 2017, a splinter in the mind of science. Was it a natural phenomenon, or something else? The world’s astronomers debated, while a few lone voices in the intelligence community and academia warned it was a scout. They were dismissed as ...

Maintenance is what keeps everything going. It’s what keeps life going. Yet it’s also easy to shirk or defer—until the thing breaks, the system falters, and everything stops. The apparent paradox is profound: Maintenance is absolutely necessary and maintenance is optional. The first in a multi-volume work, Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One offers a comprehensive overview of the civilizational importance of maintenance. The book begins with a dramatic contest of maintenance styles under life-critical conditions:

There is an old saying about problems that you may have heard before, "There are no problems, only opportunities." To this simple-minded approach, Bill Gibson says, "Hogwash." Problems do exist. And you need to prepare for them and understand them before you can overcome them. Even the great problem solvers can't make problems go away, but they often find opportunities linked to them.

In her award-winning interrogation of the last century of American history, Samantha Power - a former Balkan war correspondent and founding executive director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy - asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow “never again” repeatedly fail to stop genocide?