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If something is allowed by the laws of physics, then scientists can assume that it probably exists. Under that reasoning, certain exotic structures of spacetime called closed timelike curves may be real—and they may allow a message to travel from the future to the past.

A new study has calculated how much information can be sent backward through time via closed timelike curves. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that these spacetime pathways can form under intensely bending, rotating space—such as around a spinning black hole. “Spacetime can curve around so much that you can be innocently going forward in time and then you meet yourself in the past,” says study co-author Seth Lloyd, a quantum information scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to general relativity, in a rotating black hole, the singularity—the theoretical point of infinite density at the center—is really a one-dimensional ring, with closed timelike curves arcing around it. No one knows if these spacetime structures actually exist in our universe, but they are plausible. We do know, however, that black holes are plentiful in space and that most of them spin. “So they might very well exist,” Lloyd says.

Inspiration for the study came in part from a movie. “In early 2025, I watched the film Interstellar,” says Kaiyuan Ji, a graduate student at Cornell University who, with his advisor Mark Wilde, collaborated with Lloyd on the new research. The findings were published recently in Physical Review Letters.

In the movie, an astronaut played by Matthew McConaughey travels up close to a black hole and sends a message to his daughter in the past. Ji realized the plot was mathematically equivalent to a question he and his colleagues had posed in previous research.

The group decided to investigate how best to use closed timelike curves to transmit information between the future and the past. “The strategy has a different structure than communicating forward in time,” Ji says. “The key difference is that the sender in the future has memory of what happened in the past, and that causes a causal loop. You now have the ability to bend the probability of success.”

The researchers assumed that the channel might have some noise—interference preventing the maximum amount of information from passing through. But the sender’s memory of the past can help counter that noise, they found. “Let’s say you drop a message into a black hole in the future and it emerges from the same black hole in the past, but the message gets corrupted or parts of it get lost,” Lloyd says. “The receiver in the past can say, ‘Hey, if you’re going to send me a message last Tuesday, I know the closed timelike curve was super noisy then. Can you send multiple copies or try on Wednesday?’”

The findings could have interesting implications for quantum computing, says Giulio Chiribella, a quantum information scientist at the University of Hong Kong, who was not involved in the study. Chiribella has studied the probability of simulating closed timelike curves in a laboratory on Earth.

“We don’t know if [these curves] exist in our universe, but we do know that if they exist, they have powerful consequences,” he says. “For example, they induce radically new scenarios where the order of events becomes indefinite, boosting quantum computation and quantum communication beyond the limits of conventional setups.”

In the past, scientists have found that closed timelike curves can’t be used for paradoxical time travel. An experiment in a 2011 paper co-authored by Lloyd simulated these pathways in a laboratory and effectively sent a photon (a particle of light) back in time by less than a second. The researchers were curious whether the photon might be able to destroy the past version of itself—akin to a person traveling back in time to kill their grandfather, thus preventing themselves from ever being born. The so-called grandfather paradox is a prickly aspect of time travel, but in the case of closed timelike curves, it seems that quantum physics permits only self-consistent versions of time travel. In other words, you can visit the past, but you can’t change the future—no grandfather murder allowed.

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Today, the HISTORY Channel has officially launched Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise, a new eight-part podcast series examining one of the most consequential periods in American history. Available now on major podcast platforms, the project is hosted by bestselling author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell and features commentary from former President Barack Obama.

Produced in partnership with Higher Ground, Pushkin Industries, Audible, and The HISTORY Channel, the series revisits the years following the Civil War, when the United States confronted questions about citizenship, democracy, and what freedom would mean for millions of newly emancipated Black Americans.

While many history lessons end with the Confederacy’s defeat and the abolition of slavery, Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise focuses on the turbulent years that followed. The series also examines why many of those efforts ultimately fell short and how the consequences remain visible today. Obama appears in conversations with Gladwell at both the beginning and conclusion of the series. Their discussions frame the broader themes explored throughout the project, including political power, civic participation, and the unfinished work of American democracy.

“The Reconstruction Era was a brief but pivotal and turbulent chapter in our nation’s history – one that is often overlooked, even though its consequences are still felt today,” said Obama. “In confronting this period honestly, I hope audiences can rediscover an essential part of our past and remember that even in moments of deep conflict and contradiction, persistence and perseverance remain powerful sources of hope.”

Several prominent historians, writers, and cultural commentators also contribute to the podcast. Among them are Jelani Cobb, Eric Foner, Kellie Carter Jackson, Kidada Williams, Manisha Sinha, David Blight, Kai Wright, Ashley C. Ford, and Wyatt Cenac. Their perspectives help illuminate the debates, conflicts, and possibilities that emerged during Reconstruction.

Drawing from letters, court documents, eyewitness accounts, diaries, and historical records, the series paints a detailed portrait of a country attempting to rebuild itself after slavery. Listeners are introduced to political leaders, formerly enslaved people, educators, organizers, and reformers whose efforts helped redefine the nation’s future, even as many of their gains faced fierce resistance.

The release arrives as part of HISTORY Honors 250, a broad initiative commemorating the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026. Through original programming and special projects, the campaign seeks to revisit pivotal moments, influential figures, and lesser-known stories that have contributed to the country’s development.

For Higher Ground, the podcast adds to a growing slate of audio projects developed in partnership with Audible. Previous productions have included Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast, Your Mama’s Kitchen hosted by Michele Norris, The Wonder of Stevie hosted by Wesley Morris, and Fela Kuti: Fear No Man.

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President Barack Obama and Malcolm Gladwell (2026). Photo Credit: Higher Ground Productions | Photo: Eli Turner | Courtesy of A+E Global Media)

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Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump’s preliminary agreement to end the war with Iran.

It accomplishes none of Israel’s war aims, analysts and officials said, and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them.

Regime change? The government in Tehran is emerging from the war even more hard-line and emboldened, despite being decapitated at the outset of the conflict in late February. The deal’s requirement that American forces retreat from the “proximity” of Iran within 30 days means that Iran can boast that it has chased the U.S. military out of the region.

Ballistic missiles and proxy militias? The agreement does nothing to address Iran’s missile arsenal or its support of Israel’s enemies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

Worse still for Israel, by constraining its military in Lebanon — indeed, by requiring that Israel withdraw its forces from that country — the agreement seeks to handcuff Israel in a way that it was not before the war.

The hundreds of billions of dollars that Iran may receive in sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, or reconstruction aid could wind up funding more missiles in Iran and aiding Tehran’s militia allies around the Middle East.

And Iran’s nuclear program? The existential threat to Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has tried to eliminate throughout his career, and which was Mr. Trump’s primary reason for joining the wars on Iran, was left for a later stage of U.S.-Iran negotiations.

“It’s a bad agreement in which the Americans are paying with cash, and got, at the maximum, a letter of intent,” Yaakov Amidror, a hawkish former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said in an interview.

David Horovitz, the editor of The Times of Israel, called it “a catastrophic capitulation,” in the headline of a fiery opinion column.

And Nir Dvori, an analyst for Israel’s Channel 12 News, likened the deal to a “diplomatic Oct. 7” — a cataclysmic disaster for which Israel was wholly unprepared.

Mr. Netanyahu addressed the U.S.-Iran agreement only briefly on Thursday, saying “additional challenges lie ahead of us,” requiring “calmness, a firm stance on our security interests, and at the same time, maintaining the important connection with our American friends.”

The prime minister said Israel would stick to its ultimate goal: “Iran will not have nuclear weapons.”

He also vowed that Israel would restore security in the north, near its border with Lebanon. “That requires maintaining the security zone in southern Lebanon, and it requires that we not withdraw from it as long as Israel’s security needs demand it,” he said.

Otherwise, it was left to minor ministers and backbench lawmakers to try put the best possible face on the agreement.

Amichai Chikli, the diaspora affairs minister, speculated in a radio interview that Mr. Netanyahu would know how to say no to Mr. Trump about pulling out of Lebanon just as he knew how “to bring the United States into this war.”

But others more soberly grappled with the degree to which Mr. Netanyahu’s triumphalist rhetoric from early in the war had proved fantastical. He had repeatedly and confidently assured Israelis that the country and its alliance with the United States were “changing the face of the Middle East” to Israel’s advantage.

“We are remaking the region,” Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, said on Thursday.

“Iran came out stronger, and I believe is now the regional hegemon,” he added. “They stood up to the U.S., the global superpower. They can have missiles, and there’s nothing in the agreement about the nuclear issue except we’ll talk about it. This is an Iranian victory over the U.S. and Israel.”

Even as they reeled from the terms of the agreement, Israelis across the political spectrum seemed also to be reckoning with Mr. Trump, the nature of his support for Israel, and the degree to which Mr. Netanyahu has tied Israel’s fortunes to the American leader’s good will.

On Wednesday at the Group of 7 summit in France, the president had again spoken of Mr. Netanyahu with disdain, suggesting he was excitable and prone to overreacting to Hezbollah’s attacks. He belittled him publicly as the “very small partner” in the relationship and said that Israel would have been annihilated if it had not been for him.

Mr. Trump suggested that Syria could do a better job than Israel of cracking down on Hezbollah in Lebanon without killing as many civilians. And he minimized the ballistic-missile threat from Iran — which forced millions of Israelis to run in and out of shelters throughout the war. He said it was only fair for Iran to have missiles because other countries in the region did as well.

The reactions in Israel evoked a bad divorce.

Hanoch Milwidsky, a lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party, posted a video on social media of himself removing a red MAGA hat and replacing it with a blue one with the Hebrew words for “total victory.”

Ben-Dror Yemini, a columnist at Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest newspaper, wrote that Mr. Netanyahu had led Israel into “the most severe collapse in its history.”

“Trump reneged on every promise, turned Iran into a power, strengthened Hezbollah, and as a final flourish, gave Israel a kick and humiliation,” he wrote.

Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-born Israeli pollster, said it was “slowly sinking in” for Israelis that Mr. Netanyahu had staked the entire U.S.-Israeli relationship on his personal bond with a president prone to “temper tantrums” over “simple slights.”

“I think he was hoping that he could employ the tools that he has always employed with American presidents,” she said. “You know, tread carefully and strategically, but push the boundaries, and try to run circles around them if you can,” she added.

“I think that with a bit of a back-and-forth dance, it was largely working for him with Trump,” she said. “But he hit his limit.”

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Monday. Credit…Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

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You’re halfway through a challenging exam when you notice your focus starting to slip. The words on the page blur together, and you find your mind wandering to what you’re going to have for dinner that night. Does that sound familiar? This mental fatigue isn’t a character flaw—it’s a universal human experience that reveals something essential about how people’s minds function.

We are behavioral scientists who study how economic circumstances shape human cognition and behavior. In a recent study of more than 1,600 children, we found that the ability to sustain mental effort over time—or “cognitive endurance”—functions much like physical stamina. Almost universally, the longer people spend on a task, the worse they perform on it. But just as athletes can train to run longer distances, kids are able to strengthen their capacity for sustained thinking through simple but dedicated practice, allowing them to continue to perform at a higher level for longer stretches of time. In an era of social media and short-form content designed to minimize mental friction and demand minimal effort, the capacity for sustained thinking may be getting less practice than ever—making it more important to understand how it develops and how it can be strengthened.

Could Environment Shape Concentration?

A few years ago, while we were analyzing standardized test results from around the world with our colleagues Christina Brown of the University of Chicago and Geeta Kingdon of University College London, we noticed a remarkably consistent pattern: students performed worse on questions that appeared later in exams, even after accounting for the difficulty of the questions.

This performance decline was much steeper among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Children in poor countries showed three times the rate of performance decline compared with those in wealthy nations. This could be because disadvantaged children get fewer opportunities to train their focus. Cognitive skills generally improve with deliberate, focused and progressively more challenging training. And when looking at the activities the kids spent time on in school, we found that richer students were more likely to engage in independent, focused practice by doing activities such as working through problems on their own, reading silently, or concentrating on individual tasks. In contrast, students at disadvantaged schools were more likely to spend much of the day in passive activities such as listening to lectures, practicing rote memorization or copying from the board.

These patterns suggested that the school experience itself—particularly the amount of sustained mental effort the school day requires—could be molding students’ cognitive endurance.

Training the Mind Like a Muscle

To test whether cognitive endurance could be improved, we designed an experiment with 1,636 elementary school students in India. Students were randomly assigned to one of three groups during their study hall periods. Those in the control group continued with their usual routine—copying a few math problems from the board before spending most of the class time as they liked, resulting in minimal sustained mental effort.

In contrast, the other two “treatment” groups engaged in 20 minutes of continuous cognitive practice during these study hall periods. The members of one group solved math problems on tablets in a simple application that adapted to their ability level but didn’t have any gamified features to hold their attention. This gave these students focused practice in a specific subject area. But it was also possible that simply practicing concentration, regardless of the task, could increase mental endurance. To test that, the final group completed cognitively demanding games such as mazes and shape puzzles called tangrams that contained no academic content. These app-based games also adapted their difficulty based on performance, which kept them challenging for the students.

The results were striking. Both treatment groups showed significant improvements in their ability to maintain performance throughout tests, regardless of the type of training they had received. When students took listening comprehension, reasoning or math assessments, the performance of those who had received cognitive practice declined 22 percent more slowly than that of students in the control group. It didn’t matter whether the students had practiced with academic content or nonacademic games—the benefits were nearly identical for both groups. This suggests that the act of concentrating mattered more than what students were concentrating on.

The students who practiced concentrating also improved on standardized tests of sustained attention, including those that tested their reaction times or their ability to spot target symbols hidden in a grid. They also showed better focus in the classroom, according to ratings from their teachers—for example, they fidgeted less and followed through on multistep instructions. This seems to have translated to better grades across a wide range of subjects, too—students who received either form of cognitive practice earned grades that were about 0.09 standard deviations higher in Hindi, English, and math than those who didn’t. In comparison, this effect was roughly half to three-quarters as large as that of assigning a student to a class with seven fewer students per teacher. These were substantial improvements, considering the intervention required only 20 to 50 minutes per week over six months.

Beyond the Classroom

The implications of these findings extend beyond education. We also found evidence that disadvantaged groups, whose members are likely to have received less practice in sustaining focus, show more rapid declines in performance over time in other contexts. For example, we found that data entry workers made more errors as their shifts progressed and that less educated workers showed much steeper declines. Even voting behavior reflects these patterns: studies have found that, when a given proposition appears later in the ballot in California, voters are more likely to choose the default option. We showed that these declines are especially pronounced in lower-income neighborhoods.

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The ads are often for startups you’ve never heard of, selling a service or software that’s somehow related to AI. And while the ad voice is direct, in that it’s written as if it’s speaking directly to you, the viewer, the copy is intentionally cryptic. “Own Your Inference.” “Put AI Agents to Work for People.” Sometimes it’s menacing. “Stop Hiring Humans.”

These kinds of ads seem to be everywhere lately, but that doesn’t mean that they make much sense. Now, comedians Harris Alterman and Dave Ross are emphasizing just how banal and meaningless the AI ad age is turning out to be by creating their own fake tech ads that skewer the medium simply by amping up its tropes: AI industry gobbledegook and design minimalism.

The ads, which they put up as banners in a New York City subway station (much like the controversial, real ads for the AI companion Friend last fall), ask asinine questions. “What if forks were spoons?,” “What if Texas was upside-down?,” and “What if the Rizzler was purple?” One fake ad is for a company with a human name, “Dennis.”

Another advertises a faux company that recently rebranded. “Zipline is now Froggle,” the ad says matter-of-factly. “The cloud-based online safety you know and love, now in the palm of your hand.” An ad for a brand called Fivetable confidently states, “We Put the Q in QR1777,” and Wireflow promises, “you pay us, we pay you.”

Alterman and Ross were especially inspired by a real ad for the product development software company Linear, which shows cursors pointing toward God’s outstretched hand, as in Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” and another for Dawn, an AI mental-health app, that says “Racing Thoughts Don’t Do Waiting Rooms.”

They call the lack of distinctiveness around AI advertising in its design, voice, and fonts “slop voice,” and note that while these ads sound like they’re speaking to you, they’re really talking to someone else: a high tech, SaaS-speaking in-group. And it’s ok if the copy alienates everyone else.

“People are confused by tech advertising,” they tell Fast Company in an email. “99% of the people reading these ads have no idea what they’re talking about. It feels like 20 people in tech, advertising to 20 other people in tech. Do you really need to put up ads? Can’t you guys just get in a group chat together?”

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[Photo: courtesy Harris Alderman and Dave Ross]

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