Two weeks ago I was getting towards the end of a 100-mile rafting trip in the Idaho wilderness when I made a small mistake that almost cost me my life. Our small group of adventurers were aboard a flotilla of 18 foot rafts and three small inflatable kayaks. We were having an amazing time admiring the pristine wilderness at the river's steady rate of 4 miles per hour. I was in one of the kayaks playing around in the white water when hit a wave in the wrong way and got sucked under water and held down.
America is on the precipice of an economic meltdown which is going to start with a collapse of the housing market. If we're lucky it will remain in that one sector. If we're even luckier that collapse will in reality be just a slow decline over a few years. If we're unlucky we will repeat the steep declines we saw in 2007, but lack the financial tools to dig ourselves out. I know that it's generally a bad idea for a journalist to make predictions. After all the future is, by definition, uncertain. But I feel that holding my tongue would be complacency.
Nobel prize winning research from the 1950’s on damaged human brains can tell us a lot about whether or not the computer program LaMDA that Google built last year is actually conscious.
If you were the type who puts faith in the wisdom of internet forums then there wouldn't be any question about it: Russia is on the brink of collapse as the out-gunned Ukrainian resistance destroys one tank column after another. But how do we really know that is what is happening when most of our information comes through the social media accounts of resistance fighters and Ukrainian intelligence?
In 2016 I did something either colossally stupid, or very very brave—I climbed to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro with Wim Hof in a record-setting 28 hours. This is the breathwork that kept me alive when the Dutch Mountaineering Association predicted that we would all definitely die.
One day Mr A walked into the emergency room where he just barely was able to tell the nurse on duty that he’d taken all of his pills before he collapsed at her feet. In his pocket was a jar of pills from a local clinical trial—but with no information about what exactly they were. The medical team eventually figured out that he was in the control group. He’d taken a whole jar of placebos. . .
What is narrative nonfiction? How real is gonzo journalism? And how the heck did we come up with a word like "nonfiction" to describe books that are supposed to be true to reality?
It's perfectly normal for the Wim Hof Method to make your ears ring for a few minutes after some intense breathwork. But a few years ago people started emailing me, asking why the ringing never went away for them. Then over the last year I noticed that my own ears were ringing.
The other day Vladimir Putin's cronies said that they would consider starting World War 3 if they felt that Russia was under an "existential threat". While that might just be the usual chest thumping insanity of a nuclear-armed nation, I started to wonder what a nuclear war would really happen in the event that one nation or another decided to solve their military problems with the power of the atom.
Remember when you could have a great idea that you wanted to share with the world and you could simply post it onto any one of a half-dozen social media platforms and expect some sort of conversation to organically sprout out into the world? Maybe there would be some likes. Maybe some comments and genuine conversation?
There’s a type of intelligence that doesn’t require a brain or any sort of central organizing principle. It’s a type of intelligence that only emerges when lots of individual organisms act together in ways that are far greater than any individual parts. It’s called a superorganism where lots of individual organisms work together to solve problems and make decisions that have almost nothing to do with the conditions that any one individual experiences. Instead, those individual actions add up to a collective intelligence. A hive mind, if you will. Take, for instance, the humble slime mold.
Right now as riots crisscross the United States there is a tendency for some people to decry acts of looting and open expressions of anger as somehow illegitimate--or that they cannot possibly be part of a path that forges a better society. And, while I personally abhor violence, to say that there is no place for violence in social change ignores history.
The other day I got a very nice email from someone I met on Reddit about how I could change my image online to sell more books. His advice was very sensible.
I thanked him for the suggestions. Then said that I probably wouldn’t be following them.
Many of us are struggling to find our bearings in a world that feels out of control. While we can't change the events of the moment, we DO have a measure of control over how our bodies deal with the stress.
For a limited time only I’m offering early readers of The Wedge a chance for a personalized signed copy of the before its official release date on April 13, 2020.
I’m going to have to get into the weeds about audiobooks for a moment because they’re one of the most important tools that a writer has to make a steady living. And, unfortunately, in the last week some changes in the marketplace make it seem that some of the potential profits are going to get sucked away.
What Doesn’t Kill Us: How Freezing water, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength is out as an audiobook…
For the last four years I’ve been investigating the limits of human endurance in harsh environments. After all, our ancestors crossed frozen mountain ranges and endless ocean miles without a whisper of modern technology. So why can’t you?
What would happen if the United States legalized the sale of human organs? Economists will note the seductive market logic: with regulation, proponents of legalization suggest the organ shortage will disappear, the market will arrive at a fair price for human tissue and new laws will regulate away criminal elements.
