Jacob Willis

Philosopher David Chalmers is often asked whether the so-called real world we live in is actually a computer simulation created and run by a hidden, god-like overseer.

That's little surprise, since he was one of several consultants on 1999's The Matrix, arguably the best known popular media to touch on the topic.

Pop culture, and especially science fiction, has played host to several of philosophy's biggest questions about life, the universe and re

Trees have been a personal refuge for Nalini Nadkarni ever since she was a kid. Nadkarni, called the "queen of the forest canopy" in some circles, has used that love to guide her through a career in forest ecology.

But Nalini Nadkarni's interest in the forest is more than scientific. She sees trees as inherently spiritual. She delivers sermons on Trees and Spirituality to anyone who will listen, from religious communities to her fellow biologists.

Her message is to recognize these silent seden

Moiya McTier graduated from Harvard University by boldly going where no student has ever gone before: majoring in both astrophysics and folklore.

It was an unlikely academic course to chart — but as McTier told Tapestry host Mary Hynes, it only made her more effective in her career as a science communicator.

McTier delivers talks about science around the world. She's also an author. Her latest book, The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy, is due out this August.

Astrophysicist and folk

Stranger things: what we can learn from people we don’t know

Tapestry 53:52 Stranger things: what we can learn from people we don’t know

Strangers can change our lives in sometimes small ways, and in other times, ways that leave a legacy.

Colleen Kinder is the editor of Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, a collection of letters to the strangers who are hard to forget.

In 2016 Kinder, along with co-creator Vince Errico, began looking for stories about strangers for the web