Recently, panpsychism — the idea that consciousness is a basic property of matter that is not limited to highly developed life forms but rather pervades the universe — has been discussed a good deal in science venues. Many commentators are unsympathetic.

As the world reels amid the COVID-19 (formerly, coronavirus) pandemic, the government of China wants us to know that 1) the virus didn’t originate in China and 2) President Xi stopped it in its tracks. And that we should all be thankful to him.

Recently I discovered a show, which premiered in February, that is definitely worth a watch but may have fallen under the radar. Perhaps that’s because many of us are unfamiliar with the EPIX network. This new series diverges from the action-packed alien-driven apocalypse that we have come to expect.

A key problem for amputees is that the nerves in the remaining part of a limb used to control a prosthesis usually produce only tiny signals. They are often hard for the nervous system to distinguish from mere noise. So, to control the limb by thoughts, the signals must be amplified. A new technique uses muscle grafts to amplify the signals.

The crash came when a young mathematician, Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) discovered that a variant of the Liar’s Paradox, “Is a liar who says he’s a liar telling the truth?”, proves that mathematics cannot be reduced to a fixed set of axioms.