One of the most in-demand courses at the University of Pennsylvania — part of the exclusive, world-renowned Ivy League — promises no innovation and no competitive advantage. Nor does it offer students any way to maximize their resources or their time. Instead, it consists of reading sad novels — for hours — and discussing them in the dark.
The class is titled Existential Despair. Its creator, Professor Justin McDaniel, defines it bluntly: “Existential despair is the kind that we all share, simply by virtue of being alive.” He’s not referring to a specific kind of pain, be it a divorce, a breakup, or a humiliation. “That’s despair caused by something concrete. Existential despair is different: it comes with death, old age, illness, loneliness. You can’t pinpoint a cause. You can’t avoid it. You can’t control it.”
The course was born out of frustration. For years, in his classes, McDaniel cited cultural references that he considered to be fundamental, only to be met with silence in return. “I would talk about a famous novel, a Nobel Prize winner, a piece of music, a painting that every teenager should know, and they would just stare at me blankly. One day, I got so angry that I yelled at them and left.”
Two students followed him to his office. They wanted to read. He proposed a test: “I’ll only believe you if you read a book in front of me.” One Saturday, he placed them in a small library, took away their cell phones and gave each of them a nearly 500-page novel. Eight hours later, they had finished it. “We had the best conversation I’ve ever had about a book. They were brilliant. They saw things I hadn’t seen.”
Today, the course that came out of this experience receives hundreds of applications. Every week, the 45 accepted students find out — in the same afternoon — which book they’ll be reading. “I don’t want them to research the book or bring notes,” McDaniel points out. They read for four or five hours. Then, he turns off the lights. “We talk in complete darkness.”
His defense of the curriculum and the humanities runs counter to an increasingly STEM-oriented academic environment (a pedagogical approach that integrates science, technology, engineering and mathematics, in order to promote practical and applied learning). “I have no problem with practical education,” he clarifies. “But I don’t call it education; I call it training. Education doesn’t have answers. It doesn’t give you an instruction manual for life.”
McDaniel argues that efficiency — when elevated to the highest level — leaves out a substantial part of the human experience: “If we truly wanted to be efficient, we would be. But nobody eats perfectly, sleeps perfectly, or chooses a partner optimally. Our existence is not defined by rationality, but by irrationality.”
For him, literature doesn’t promise redemption, but it does offer recognition: others have experienced heartbreak, illness, shame, or loss. Others have previously thought about what we’re only now beginning to formulate.
“If we send young people out into the world to be neurosurgeons or bankers,” he notes, “we should also prepare them to be emotionally sophisticated. I want my students to have beautiful lives, but I know they won’t be free from suffering […] And maybe they won’t [always] have resources. But there are millions of novels, films, works of art and pieces of music that explore these [human] experiences with complexity. We can teach the ways in which others have tried to construct meaning throughout history: how they failed, how they succeeded, or how they fell short. These examples show you that you aren’t alone,” he concludes.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
Summary: What makes us human? For decades, scientists have debated whether our ability to speak and our ability to understand others’ feelings (Theory of Mind) grew from the same “mental soil.” A new study has finally settled the question.
Using fMRI to scan children as young as three, researchers found that these two sophisticated skills originate from completely separate, non-overlapping brain regions. This “discrete architecture” suggests that our brains evolved with specialized wiring for language and empathy from the very beginning, rather than these skills branching off from a single cognitive source as we grow.
Key Facts
Hemispheric Separation: The research identified the superior temporal lobe as the hub for both skills, but with a strict geographical divide: Language is based in the left hemisphere, while Theory of Mind is based in the right.
No Developmental Overlap: Contrary to prior theories that children’s brains are “messier” and become specialized later, the study showed that even in 3-year-olds, these regions are already distinct and do not overlap.
The Connectivity Fingerprint: By analyzing “resting-state” scans, researchers identified unique communication patterns for each region. These “fingerprints” prove that the two systems talk to the rest of the brain in entirely different ways.
Stable Wiring: Longitudinal data (tracking the same children over time) showed that this neural separation is stable throughout childhood.It doesn’t “unfold” as we age, it is part of the brain’s baseline blueprint.
Adult Integration: Interestingly, while the regions are separate in kids, the networks start to “talk” to each other more in adults, suggesting we learn to use these complementary skills in tandem as we mature.
Source: Ohio State University
A new study is the first to show that two of our most sophisticated cognitive functions, using and understanding language and being able to sense how other people feel, have distinct origins in the brain in young children – matching what we know about the adult brain.
The findings suggest that these separate but related ways of processing complex concepts, both uniquely human skills, do not originate from overlapping brain areas and grow more distinct as the mind matures, which challenges prior theories. Instead, our brains appear to have evolved with discrete architecture and wiring enabling these different kinds of thinking.
Using fMRI to scan the brains of children while they listened to spoken language and watched a short movie, the researchers found that parts of the brain responsible for language and mentalizing, known as theory of mind, are separate and do not overlap. Additional analysis of how these regions communicate with other brain areas at rest reinforced the imaging data.
“It seems that these processors that help us mentalize and that help us speak and understand were dissociated very, very early in the evolutionary process, such that we can’t even see traces of overlap right now in human development,” said Zeynep Saygin, senior author of the study and an associate professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.
“It’s a fundamental question humans ask themselves: ‘What is it that makes us human? How does human cognition emerge?’ I think this sheds some light on that.”
Kelly Hiersche, a doctoral student in Saygin’s lab, led the study, published April 23 in Communications Biology. David Osher, assistant professor of psychology, was also a co-author and collaborator.
The two communication skills of focus originate from a region of the brain called the superior temporal lobe, located near each temple – with language based in the left hemisphere and theory of mind based in the right.
The researchers first confirmed with fMRI scans of the brain in 28 adults what has been found before – that separate and distinct regions associated with language and theory of mind did, indeed, respond strongly to stimuli intended to activate those areas.
The team then worked with 42 children between ages 3 and 9, scanning their brains with 2 fMRI scans, one while they listened to sentences and another while they watched a silent cartoon, observing which brain regions were activated for each task. Control conditions included nonsense words for the language assessment and, for the mentalization evaluation, signs of pain in cartoon characters – which elicits a pain response rather than theory of mind.
Results of the scans and additional analysis – imaging at the 2-3 millimeter, or 3D voxel, level of the brain across both hemispheres – showed that the regions responding to language stimuli and theory of mind stimuli were separate, with no overlap.
“That was our first question: Are these skills distinct in both their function and location? And we see really broadly, yes,” Hiersche said. “We demonstrate this for the first time in kids, extending an adult finding to development. They’re really distinct there, which is pretty cool.”
To tap further into the evolutionary question, the researchers took fMRI scans of the adults’ and children’s brains at rest – when the brain is still busy, but not being asked to respond to specific stimuli – to observe what other brain regions these separate language and mentalization regions were connecting with.
“If you observe a voxel’s connectivity, or how it talks to the rest of the brain, that’s going to give you an idea about how that voxel is going to function,” Hiersche said. This is the idea of a connectivity fingerprint: a unique connectivity pattern that determines the unique function of a brain region.
Using predictive modeling to characterize these connectivity fingerprints, the researchers found that there was more to the language and theory of mind distinctions than their locations on separate sides of the brain.
“Regions of the brain that are functionally specific should be communicating in a unique way,” Saygin said. “We knew these regions were localized in different parts of the brain, but also showed that there’s nothing in how they communicate with the rest of the brain that indicates that they were at any point overlapping.”
Looking for changes in the kids’ connectivity fingerprints over time further drove home the point that the regional and functional distinctions don’t change during childhood brain development.
“We were able to not just look across different kids, but look within the same child to see what happened over time,” Hiersche said. “And we showed that it’s not the case that when you’re 3 years old, you see a lot of overlap in these functions, but then when you get to 5 years old, they pull apart and become more separate.
“The connections we’re seeing that support these tasks – and that also separate them – are stable within the same person over time.”
In fact, comparing the differences in connectivity fingerprints between children and adults showed that while these functions and connectivity patterns are quite clearly separate and distinct in kids, there is some overlap across brain networks in adults – a sign of change in how we make use of the complementary skills.
“In adults, the mentalizing theory of mind network starts to talk to slightly similar regions as the language areas. In children, as those skills keep developing, maybe those networks are talking to each other more,” Saygin said.
These results challenge the idea that language and mentalizing have similar origins and instead support distinct mechanisms for these communicative skills, she said.
Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences, Center for Brain Injury Recovery and Discovery, and Women in Philanthropy award.
Key Questions Answered:
Q: If a child is a “late talker,” does that mean they also struggle with empathy?
A: Not according to this research. Because the brain architecture for language and Theory of Mind (empathy/mentalizing) is discrete, a delay in one does not automatically imply a delay in the other. They are running on two different “hard drives.”
Q: How do you test “Theory of Mind” in a silent cartoon?
A: Researchers show movies where characters have “false beliefs” (e.g., a character looks for a toy in a box not knowing it was moved). To understand why the character is confused, the brain must “mentalize”, or step into the character’s perspective.
Q: Why does the brain eventually “overlap” these networks in adults?
A:As we get older, our social interactions become more complex. We don’t just speak; we speak with the intent to influence or comfort others. The increased communication between these networks in adults likely reflects our ability to use language and empathy simultaneously to navigate life.
Putin’s SHOCKING Iran Uranium Move Just Changed Everything — What Comes Next Could Shake the World ? Putin just made a SHOCKING move on Iran’s enriched uranium that could reshape the entire Middle East crisis. Russia’s standing offer to take custody of Iran’s 450kg stockpile remains on the table—but Washington rejected it. Now, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has flown directly to St. Petersburg to meet Putin, while China watches silently from the background. Col. Douglas Macgregor breaks down why Trump turned down the only proven mechanism to resolve 99% of the deal, exposing a dangerous geopolitical standoff.
Discover the hidden strategy behind Iran’s dual-track approach, Russia’s calculated leverage, and what comes next in this unfolding crisis. 00:00 – The Bombshell Announcement: Putin’s Uranium Offer Still Stands 05:30 – Why Trump REJECTED the Only Working Solution 12:15 – Iran’s Strategic Move: Araghchi Lands in St. Petersburg 18:45 – China’s Silent Power Play & The Beijing Connection 25:20 – The Dangerous Endgame: What Happens Next
You nailed the perfect prompt. The output sang. You saved your Super Prompt. Then, you opened a new chat the next morning and AI acted like you’d never met. It’s not broken. You just haven’t taught it to remember YOU, Jim VandeHei writes.
Why it matters: Master what AI stores, what it can reference from your past and how to direct both — and your chats will start smarter. This is how you unlock next-level prompting and results.
The basics take 10 minutes. The payoff compounds forever.
A quick primer on AI memory: Think of it as two layers.
Inside a standalonechat thread, AI can use what you’ve said there. That’s called working memory. Close the chat, that brain resets.
Lasting memory is different. It’s what AI remembers about you — your job, your style, your preferences. Most people accidentally rely only on working memory and wonder why every chat starts cold. Don’t.
There’s nuance to how memory works on different platforms. Easy trick: Just ask the LLM to tell you how its memory works and how to get the most out of it based on your specific needs.
Teach it on the way out. You can explicitly flag what matters to your AI’s saved memory. End important chats by telling the robot explicitly what to keep — and what to ignore.
The prompt:“Save this preference for future chats: I’m CEO of Axios. I write a Saturday newsletter for CEOs in Smart Brevity. I prefer short, punchy paragraphs with bold labels and concrete stats.”
Audit the AI’s file on you. You can see the memories AI has stored about you — and edit them. Read them like an HR file on yourself. Delete what’s wrong, sharpen what’s vague, add what’s missing. Do this every few weeks.
The prompt:“What saved memories do you currently have about me? List them, then suggest what I should edit, delete or add.”
Mine your past. This is a new, underused move. ChatGPT and Claude (on paid plans) can search past chats if you enable the ability in your settings. That’s not a chatbot — that’s a coach who can review your recent thinking and spot patterns you can’t.
The prompt:“Look across my recent chats, especially the last 30, and tell me what patterns you see in how I think, write, get stuck — or repeat myself?”
Graduate to workspaces. This is where it gets powerful. Projects (in ChatGPT and Claude) and Gems (in Gemini) are lasting workspaces built around a single topic. Anything you revisit more than twice deserves one — not a standalone chat.Y
You can add specific files and write the rules in plain English. AI can help with that.
For my CEO newsletter project, I dropped in every column I’ve written, my book on leadership and speeches I’ve given. Then I wrote out the audience, the tone, the length, plus data sources to use and ones to avoid.
The more useful context you add — and the more work you do inside the project — the sharper the output.
The bottom line: AI without context is a stranger. AI with memory is a colleague who gets sharper over time. Spend 10 minutes today teaching your AI who you are. Send Jim the weirdest (or smartest!) thing your AI has ever remembered: finishline@axios.com. … Share this column. If you’re a CEO or on a CEO’s team: Ask to join Jim’s new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, survivors of all ages, abilities, nationalities, and ethnicities had to somehow come to terms with the enormous trauma they had suffered before they could fully rebuild their lives. But for a small and determined group of young men and women, that first step toward healing was revenge.
Nakam is the chilling true story of the fifty men and women who joined together as a sort of underground army to avenge the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
The year was 1945. A small paramilitary group of Holocaust survivors, many of whom had fought in partisan militias in the forests of Ukraine and Lithuania, simply could not return to everyday life as if nothing had happened — as if the social order had not been breached to the highest degree. They had little faith in the Nuremberg trials to bring about justice, for they considered every citizen of Germany equally complicit in the crimes, and thus equally deserving of punishment. So they devised a plan to poison and kill six million Germans.
Their leader, Abba Kovner, was a charismatic poet and resistance fighter. He, like them, was a Holocaust survivor with a burning desire for revenge on Germany. He became a messianic figure; and while he was smart, driven, and courageous, he could not operate in a vacuum. He had to navigate the forces around him, including the more moderate Yishuv — the administrators of Israel — and the Haganah, the Zionist military leaders.
The group of avengers, called Nakam (Hebrew for “vengeance”), had to solve a serious ethical dilemma before they could fulfill their mission. Should they dedicate themselves to rescuing survivors, forging a path toward health, safety, and the construction of a political homeland? Or should they focus on the past and retaliate, sacrificing everything?
Dina Porat is an Israeli historian, a professor emeritus of Modern Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, and the former chief historian at Yad Vashem. Her writing is scholarly yet accessible, tender yet bold. It draws on hitherto unstudied archival sources and in-depth interviews with the surviving avengers themselves.Translated by Mark L. Levinson as part of the prestigious Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture series, Nakam delivers new insights about war, trauma, healing, and the ethics of revenge.
Linda F. Burghardt is a New York-based journalist and author who has contributed commentary, breaking news, and features to major newspapers across the U.S., in addition to having three non-fiction books published. She writes frequently on Jewish topics and is now serving as Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County.
The United States is getting sucked into a conflict in the Middle East, central banks are desperately trying to keep inflation under control and the world is facing an energy shock that may cripple the global economy. There are lots of ways the world looks very similar to the early 1970s. And yet, it is now clear that there is also one significant difference between now and then. Whereas half a century ago, the oil cartel OPEC was rising in power, with Tuesday’s shock decision by the United Arab Emirates to quit the group, it is clear that it is falling apart. In reality, the US is taking back control of the fossil fuel industry – and that is of huge geopolitical significance.
As of April 2026, a series of AI-generated, “Lego-style” propaganda videos created by pro-Iranian groups have gone viral, targeting American political figures with animated, hip-hop-style diss tracks. These videos are designed to look like they were produced by The Lego Group but are actually part of a sophisticated digital “meme war”. Fortune +4
Key Aspects of the Iran Lego Rap Videos:
The Content: The animated videos depict Lego-style characters in surreal, aggressive scenarios, often featuring hip-hop soundtracks, to mock U.S. politicians and officials, including Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. Facebook +2
The “King Charles” Connection: Some content discusses Trump interacting with international figures like King Charles III, with narratives asserting that U.S. officials are failing in their leadership. YouTube +1
The Creators: The videos are reportedly produced by a team calling themselves “Explosive Media,” which has been described as a “student-led media team” that admits the Iranian regime is a “customer”. The New Yorker +1
The Technology: They use AI tools, including ChatGPT, Grok, and Suno for lyrics and audio, and Sora-like video generators, to create these clips in about 24 hours. The New Yorker +1
Platform Response:YouTube took down accounts associated with these videos for violating policies against “deceptive practices” and coordinated foreign influence campaigns.The New York Times
These videos are being used to push a narrative that Iran is resisting American pressure, utilizing pop culture to gain viral traction. Fortune +1
Trump just decided how this war ends, and it’s not how anyone expected… Trump has reportedly told his aides to prepare for an extended U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The president apparently sees both available off-ramps, pulling out of the conflict entirely or resuming combat operations, as carrying significantly more risk than maintaining the current naval blockade indefinitely. This follows separate reporting that the intelligence community was directed to assess the risks of declaring unilateral victory and pulling back from the conflict. Both data points point in the same direction.
Trump is choosing to settle into the standoff rather than force a resolution either way. The logic is brutal but coherent. Resuming bombing burns through more JASSM-ER missiles the Pentagon can’t replace for years, risks more American casualties, drives oil even higher heading into midterms, and almost certainly fails to extract the nuclear concession Iran refuses to make.
Walking away with no deal hands Iran a clean political victory and tells every adversary that American military pressure can be outwaited.Maintaining the blockade keeps the pressure on Tehran, slowly degrades the Iranian economy, and preserves Trump’s leverage for whenever a real diplomatic opening emerges.
But there’s a real cost to “indefinite blockade” as a strategy. American gas prices already at $4.18 don’t ease while the Strait stays effectively closed. Fertilizer prices stay 90% above pre-war levels. Global supply chains stay fractured. The Iran war might be morphing into a permanent low-intensity confrontation, with the U.S. Navy enforcing a blockade in perpetuity while Iran keeps boarding ships, deploying cyber attacks, and waiting for the political pressure on Trump to crack first. Source: WSJ
The problem plaguing Western civilization isn’t toxic masculinity, it’s a lack of masculinity. What the country needs is fatherhood. Watch our new documentary “Fathers Wanted” on https://t.co/sLkXnGKCFd. pic.twitter.com/QRLFiYf99i
Send Jim the weirdest (or smartest!) thing your AI has ever remembered: 
If you’re a CEO or on a CEO’s team:
Fortune +4
Facebook +2
YouTube +1
The New Yorker +1
The New Yorker +1
The New York Times
Fortune +1
canisgallicus 