New · Dossier · 22 October 2026
DISCOVERY FOR HUNGRY MINDS
There is more here. Come look.
Plants that click when they’re thirsty. A bird that may sense a direction you can’t. A library read from lumps of charcoal. Sourced ideas from science, culture and everyday life, the threads between them, and how far the evidence goes.
NEW, AND WHAT IT CONNECTS TO
Slow seepage through a layer sets the delay, in microbial mats and in pumped clay.
Connects to · Dossier
The Morning Tax
Open DossierDOSSIERS
Pick the one you can’t ignore.
Each Dossier marks what’s known, what’s our read, and what’s still open.
DossierMind × Body × Evidence
Your body is not a truth detector
A chill can feel like recognition. The science suggests several paths to that feeling, and none of them can tell you whether the thing that moved you was true.
Open Dossier →DossierAI & us × Identity
Your AI twin may be a stereotype with your name on it
Researchers built “digital twins,” AI copies of real people made from each person’s answers to 500-plus questions. Asked new questions, the copies matched their people only weakly and missed them in systematic ways, stereotyping among them.
Open Dossier →DossierHistory × Materials
The flaw in Roman concrete may have been the feature
Roman concrete is dotted with white lumps of lime, long blamed on sloppy mixing. When a crack reaches one and water seeps in, the lime can dissolve and harden again as new mineral that seals the crack.
Open Dossier →Some are more alike than they look. All 25 Dossiers
TRAILS
One idea leads to the next
- A bird may see a direction you cannot
- Plants get louder when they are thirsty
- Instruments do not reveal reality unchanged
- A wrist can carry sound
- The flaw in Roman concrete may have been the feature
- Surprise is a memory technology
- Trees may not be talking through fungi after all
- Plants get louder when they are thirsty
- Loneliness leaves biological traces
- The scariest number may be the least certain
VIDEOS
Watch it, then read the evidence.
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Roman-style concrete: when the crack fills
From the Dossier The flaw in Roman concrete may have been the feature
Photo: Tiia Monto, CC BY 4.0
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Plants get louder when they are thirsty
From the Dossier Thirsty plants click more often
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The dead salmon brain-scan study
From the Dossier A brain scanner once found a dead salmon thinking
OPEN CHANNELS
Keep these open.
ENCOUNTERS
Enter something.
See the ordinary again
Louis, Can of Cola
Spend twenty-four minutes with a cola can who wants to be chosen, and fears what happens when he is.
Ian Chillag, host and creator; Louis Kornfeld performs Louis · Podcast
Disturb the self
The Play of Appearances
For thirty-seven minutes, let thoughts, feelings, and even your sense of self appear and pass.
Rob Burbea · Guided meditation
Disturb the self
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
Follow a narrator into an office, then decide what it means to follow at all.
Davey Wreden and William Pugh / Crows Crows Crows; narration by Kevan Brighting · Game
We’re still figuring a lot of this out too. Follow whatever pulls you in.