Scientists and dietitians are starting to agree on the recipe for a long, healthy life. It's not sexy, and it doesn't involve fancy pills or pricey diet potions.

Fill your plate with plants. Include vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and legumes. Don't include a lot of meat, milk, or highly-processed foods that a gardener or farmer wouldn't recognize.

"There's absolutely nothing more important for our health than what we eat each and every day," Sara Seidelmann, a cardiologist and nutrition researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told Business Insider.

Seidelman recently published a massive, blockbuster global study surveying the eating patterns of more than 447,000 people around the world. What she discovered (and what is probably not a huge surprise to your mother) is that no matter where you live or what your daily diet is like, banning entire food groups and thinking you can cheat your way into good health may work for a while, but it could also send you into an early grave.

The popular keto diet, which involves strictly limiting carbs to less than 50 grams a day (that's no more than two apples' worth), and subsisting primarily on high-fat foods, is one of those restrictive diets that could have harmful long-term consequences.

Other low-carb weight-loss strategies that fall into this category include the paleo diet, Atkins, Dukan, and Whole 30. Besides their potential for harm, nutrition experts routinely say these popularlow-carb diets are really hard to follow.

Some of the benefits of going keto are impossible to dispute: following a high-fat, low-carb diet can be a solid strategy for rapid weight loss and blood sugar control. The keto diet is also a great prescription for children with tough-to-control epileptic seizures. For decades, people have seen stellar results managing those conditions on a keto diet with the help and guidance of professionals.

Unfortunately, there's some limited evidence going low-carb might also lead people to become less tolerant of glucose and develop diabetes, though more research is needed to settle the debate.

What we do know, based on carefully conducted laboratory testing of overweight men, is that going keto probably doesn't help burn more body fat than a regular regime. Instead, it forces people to dramatically curb their sugar intake (remember, sugar is 100% carbohydrate) and kick processed foods to the curb. Those are both good habits for overall health and blood sugar levels, and can help reduce your likelihood of developing cancer.

But like aspirin, a special high-fat, low-carb diet probably shouldn't be an everyday habit for otherwise healthy people. Our bodies simply aren't designed to fuel up on fats, unless we're literally starving. Even keto evangelist Josh Axe says it's not a diet that should be followed for more than a few months at a time.

Finally, low-carb diets make it easy to neglect key nutrients like magnesium, calcium, and potassium. These nutrients can be plentiful on less restrictive diets that include fresh, high-carb foods like beans, bananas, and oats.

More studies suggest people who eat whole, nutrient-rich foods live the longest, and have a lower cancer risk

Flickr/Rusvaplauke

More research that backs up Seidelmann's was presented in August at the European Society of Cardiology Congress.

Researchers who presented at that conference studied the eating patterns of nearly 25,000 people in the US and more than 447,000 others around the world. Again, they found that those who ate a moderate amount of carbohydrates were more likely to live longer than either low-carb or high-carb dieters.

"Our study suggests that in the long-term [low-carb diets] are linked with an increased risk of death from any cause, and deaths due to cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, and cancer," Maciej Banach, a professor at the Medical University of Lodz in Poland who helped write the forthcoming study, said in a release.

A third study published this week in PLOS Medicine which surveyed the eating habits of 471,495 Europeans over a 22 year period revealed that people whose diets have lower "nutritional quality" (ie. fewer fresh vegetables, legumes, and nuts) are more likely to develop some of the most common and deadliest forms of cancer, including colon, stomach, lung, liver, and breast cancers.

Basically, we're learning there's no shortcut to healthy eating

It can be a tricky business calculating the precise kind of diet that leads to a long life. Part of the problem is that (thankfully) we humans don't live our lives in highly-controlled laboratory conditions. Until that terrifying day arrives and we all become well-studied lab rats, we have to rely on long-term observational data, usually in the form of surveys, to know more about which diets are the best long-term plans.

In study after study, diet survey data from around the world reveals that people who stick to limited amounts of meats, dairy, and processed foods — and fuel up on fiber-rich plant-based foods, including vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and yes, even carb-heavy beans — have some of the best health outcomes. Seidelmann refers to their diets as rich in what she calls "whole foods."

"They were not processed," she said of the diets of people who lived longest in her study. These people would consume whole grain rice, not white varieties. They'd eat plants like fruits and vegetables, not more processed versions of the foods like fruit juice or smoothies.

"You have the intact fiber, you have a lot more nutrients," Seidelmann said.

Fiber isn't just good for keeping your gut moving. Scientists feeding fiberful diets to mice are discovering that the carbs, which can't be absorbed by the body, can help protect aging brains from some of the damaging chemicals associated with Alzheimer's, and reduce inflammation in the gut. They're confident that the health benefits of eating more fiber extend to humans, too.

But a fiberful, plant-based regime can be tricky to maintain on a low-carb diet, because some of the highest-fiber foods are also high carb, like savory beans, crunchy peas, and sweet fruit.

"It is not a common pattern to eat very low-carb, strictly plant based," Seidelmann said. "At least in the Western world, it tends to be more animal based. That just is what it is."

People on low-carb diets often turn to more butter and meat for sustenance, which can increase blood pressure, and in the case of processed meats, contribute to cancer. Meat and dairy also contribute to inflammation in the body, which can help cancerous tumors form and grow.

The new scientific findings all support what parents, trainers, and coaches have been saying for years: eat less junk. Continue to be skeptical of the latest miracle diet, be it keto, or any other passing fad.

“SELL in May and go away,” say the denizens of Wall Street, and to the usual summer lethargy is added the excuse of a heatwave. But for those working in private equity, there is no let-up. The “shops”, as private-equity funds like to call themselves, are stuffed with money and raising more: $1.1trn in “dry powder” ready to spend around the world, according to Preqin, a consultancy, with another $950bn being raised by 3,050 firms.

So hot is the market that there are rumours of money being turned away. Even the firms themselves, which receive fees linked to assets under management, cannot fathom how to use all that may come their way. It is not for want of trying. The year to date has seen nearly 1,000 acquisitions (see chart 1). Health care has been particularly vibrant (see next article).

Even more noteworthy than the volume of money pouring into private equity is the way the business is maturing. Banks are reconfiguring their operations to serve such a transaction-heavy clientele. Limited partners—the public-pension schemes, sovereign-wealth funds, endowments and family offices that provide the bulk of private-equity investment—are playing more active roles. It all adds up to a stealthy, but significant, reshaping of the financial ecosystem.

Data on returns are patchy. Odd measures are often used to gauge performance and disclosure is intermittent. But there is plenty of reason to believe that private-equity funds have done well in the past decade. Low interest rates have favoured their debt-heavy business model. Rising asset prices have made it easy to sell for large gains.

And some recent clouds on the horizon have dissipated. Mooted tax reforms would have stopped private-equity firms from deducting the interest they pay on debt from their taxable income and forced their managers to pay the personal-tax rate on their investment profits (or “carried interest”), rather than the lower capital-gains rate. In the event, however, the new rules brought in last year did not touch carried interest at all and only slightly reduced the benefits of debt.

Another fear had been that regulations would become less supportive. Jay Clayton, who took over at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year, made it clear that he wanted to see a shift towards public markets. He noted that the loss of companies to private equity had denied opportunities to small investors. A flurry of public offerings followed his appointment, including sales by private-equity firms. But the burdens of being listed remain heavy. These include onerous filing requirements and the knowledge that routine business decisions may become the subject of caustic public debate.

The result is that the value of public companies being taken private continues to rise (see chart 2). The figures understate the trend, since they omit the growing number of large companies selling off divisions to private-equity firms. These deals attract little attention—which is partly the point. Headquarters do not move; senior executives keep their jobs. Recent examples include the decision by J.M. Smucker, a food company, to sell its baking business to Brynwood Partners and GE’s move to sell its industrial-engines division to Advent International. Similarly unremarked is the rising number of transactions in which one private-equity firm sells to another, rather than listing an asset on the public markets.

Private equity’s growing heft has knock-on effects throughout the financial sector. Goldman Sachs has 25 merger bankers assigned to private-equity firms, working on deals alongside colleagues who focus on specific industries. Its analysts monitor 5,500 private-equity holdings—50% more than the number of listings on the American public markets. The other big institutional banks, such as Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, are just as attentive to private equity.

The most significant change may be in private equity’s investor base. In the past two years the number of limited partners with more than $1bn invested has grown from 304 to 359. Together they account for $1.5trn—half of all private-equity money, according to Preqin. And this statistic does not fully capture their growing activism. As well as placing cash in private-equity funds, they increasingly “co-invest”—ie, take direct stakes in a buy-out.

The advantage for limited partners is that they avoid management fees—often 2% annually, plus 20% of profits. Private-equity funds gain from being less reliant on each other. Not long ago, large deals often required several funds to collaborate. The purchase of Nielsen Media in 2006, for example, involved seven. That alarmed antitrust regulators, complicated management and made it hard to exit from investments, since many potential buyers were already co-owners. The value of deals done by more than one private-equity firm has fallen by half since the Nielsen deal. Even when firms work together, the average number involved is smaller than it was.

For the biggest deals, private-equity firms are today making acquisitions solo and then syndicating large stakes through co-investments to limited partners. Notable among numerous recent examples are Blackstone’s purchase of Thomson Reuters’ finance and risk division in January for $20bn, and Carlyle’s of the specialty-chemicals division of Akzo Nobel, a Dutch multinational, in March for $12bn. The process often begins with a phone call by a private-equity firm to big, sophisticated investors such as GIC, Singapore’s sovereign-wealth fund, or CPP Investment Board, a giant Canadian pension fund. They can quickly put together teams to analyse transactions. Smaller limited partners are brought in later if needed, along with select outsiders, notably family offices.

This trend does not just reduce risk for private-equity managers. It also underlines a change in financial markets. Why should companies accept the costs and scrutiny that come with selling shares to the general public when there is a sophisticated, rich, private alternative? And when the time comes for one private-equity owner to sell, another private-equity fund can put together such a network to buy. Brokers and exchanges developed a century ago to help companies tap money where it lay—in individual pockets. Today that capital increasingly lies elsewhere.

This article appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline "Barbarians grow up"

Washington (CNN) - Two US F-22 "Raptor" fighter jets intercepted two Russian TU-95 bombers on Tuesday, according to a statement released by North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The Russian bombers "intercepted west of mainland Alaska were accompanied by two Russian SU-35 'Flanker' fighter jets," NORAD said in a statement issued Wednesday.

"The Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and at no time did the aircraft enter United States or Canadian airspace," the statement said. It added that the intercept took place while the Russian bombers were in the US Air Defense Identification Zone, which extends about 200 miles off Alaska's western coast.

The incident marks the second time US F-22s have intercepted Russian bombers off the coast of Alaska this month. The previous intercept occurred on Sept. 1. However, during that earlier intercept, the Russian Tu-95s were not escorted by Russian fighter jets.

Two Russian Tu-95 bombers were also intercepted by F-22's off the coast of Alaska in May, nearly a year after the last encounter of this kind.

A US official previously told CNN that the military sees these flights as routine and said they pose no concern.

Russia is currently conducting a large-scale military exercise in the country's east, which Moscow has called the largest drill since before the end of the Soviet Union.

While the US military has cast doubt on the abilities of the new Russian weapons, a US Defense Intelligence Agency report from 2017 notes Moscow is in the midst of "a massive state armaments program" aimed at equipping its forces with "70% new or modernized equipment by 2020."

Even for people who love books, finding the opportunity to read can be a challenge. Many, then, rely on audiobooks, a convenient alternative to old-fashioned reading. You can listen to the latest bestseller while commuting or cleaning up the house.

But is listening to a book really the same as reading one?

“I was a fan of audiobooks, but I always viewed them as cheating,” says Beth Rogowsky, an associate professor of education at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

For a 2016 study, Rogowsky put her assumptions to the test. One group in her study listened to sections of Unbroken, a nonfiction book about World War II by Laura Hillenbrand, while a second group read the same parts on an e-reader. She included a third group that both read and listened at the same time. Afterward, everyone took a quiz designed to measure how well they had absorbed the material. “We found no significant differences in comprehension between reading, listening, or reading and listening simultaneously,” Rogowsky says.

Score one for audiobooks? Maybe. But Rogowsky’s study used e-readers rather than traditional print books, and there’s some evidence that reading on a screen reduces learning and comprehension compared to reading from printed text. So it’s possible that, had her study pitted traditional books against audiobooks, old-school reading might have come out on top.

If you’re wondering why printed books may be better than screen-based reading, it may have to do with your inability to gauge where you are in an electronic book. “As you’re reading a narrative, the sequence of events is important, and knowing where you are in a book helps you build that arc of narrative,” says Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of Raising Kids Who Read. While e-readers try to replicate this by telling you how much of a book you have left, in a percentage or length of time to the end, this doesn’t seem to have the same narrative-orienting effect as reading from a traditional book.

The fact that printed text is anchored to a specific location on a page also seems to help people remember it better than screen-based text, according to more research on the spatial attributes of traditional printed media. All this may be relevant to the audiobook vs. book debate because, like digital screens, audiobooks deny users the spatial cues they would use while reading from printed text.

The self-directed rhythms associated with reading may also differentiate books from audiobooks.

“About 10 to 15% of eye movements during reading are actually regressive—meaning [the eyes are] going back and re-checking,” Willingham explains. “This happens very quickly, and it’s sort of seamlessly stitched into the process of reading a sentence.” He says this reading quirk almost certainly bolsters comprehension, and it may be roughly comparable to a listener asking for a speaker to “hold on” or repeat something. “Even as you’re asking, you’re going over in your mind’s ear what the speaker just said,” he says. Theoretically, you can also pause or jump back while listening to an audio file. “But it’s more trouble,” he adds.

Another consideration is that whether we’re reading or listening to a text, our minds occasionally wander. Seconds (or minutes) can pass before we snap out of these little mental sojourns and refocus our attention, says David Daniel, a professor of psychology at James Madison University and a member of a National Academy of Sciences project aimed at understanding how people learn.

If you’re reading, it’s pretty easy to go back and find the point at which you zoned out. It’s not so easy if you’re listening to a recording, Daniel says. Especially if you’re grappling with a complicated text, the ability to quickly backtrack and re-examine the material may aid learning, and this is likely easier to do while reading than while listening. “Turning the page of a book also gives you a slight break,” he says. This brief pause may create space for your brain to store or savor the information you’re absorbing.

Daniel coauthored a 2010 study that found students who listened to a podcast lesson performed worse on a comprehension quiz than students who read the same lesson on paper. “And the podcast group did a lot worse, not a little worse,” he says. Compared to the readers, the listeners scored an average of 28% lower on the quiz—about the difference between an A or a D grade, he says.

Interestingly, at the start of the experiment, almost all the students wanted to be in the podcast group. “But then right before I gave them the quiz, I asked them again which group they would want to be in, and most of them had changed their minds—they wanted to be in the reading group,” Daniel says. “They knew they hadn’t learned as much.”

He says it’s possible that, with practice, the listeners might be able to make up ground on the readers. “We get good at what we do, and you could become a better listener if you trained yourself to listen more critically,” he says. (The same could be true of screen-based reading; some research suggests that people who practice “screen learning” get better at it.)

But there may also be some “structural hurdles” that impede learning from audio material, Daniels says. For one thing, you can’t underline or highlight something you hear. And many of the “This is important!” cues that show up in text books—things like bolded words or boxed bits of critical info—aren’t easily emphasized in audio-based media.

But audiobooks also have some strengths. Human beings have been sharing information orally for tens of thousands of years, Willingham says, while the printed word is a much more recent invention. “When we’re reading, we’re using parts of the brain that evolved for other purposes, and we’re MacGyvering them so they can be applied to the cognitive task of reading,” he explains. Listeners, on the other hand, can derive a lot of information from a speaker’s inflections or intonations. Sarcasm is much more easily communicated via audio than printed text. And people who hear Shakespeare spoken out loud tend to glean a lot of meaning from the actor’s delivery, he adds.

However, a final factor may tip the comprehension and retention scales firmly in favor of reading, and that’s the issue of multitasking. “If you’re trying to learn while doing two things, you’re not going to learn as well,” Willingham says. Even activities that you can more or less perform on autopilot—stuff like driving or doing the dishes—take up enough of your attention to impede learning. “I listen to audiobooks all the time while I’m driving, but I would not try to listen to anything important to my work,” he says.

All that said, if you’re reading or listening for leisure—not for work or study—the differences between audiobooks and print books are probably “small potatoes,” he adds. “I think there’s enormous overlap in comprehension of an audio text compared to comprehension of a print text.”

So go ahead and “cheat.” Your book club buddies will never know.

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.

Over the course of his short but already notable career, director Damien Chazelle has shown a penchant for stripping away romanticized idealism to expose the more honest, human truths hidden underneath. Whiplash is the story of an incredibly talented musician who realizes his potential, not due to feel-good monologues or platitudes about trying his best, but because he’s under the tutelage of a sociopathic teacher. La La Land, which earned Chazelle an Academy Award for Best Director, told the tale of two star-crossed lovers in the style of a nostalgic, classic Hollywood musical — only to deny the characters the storybook happy ending that both the characters and the audience were expecting. Chazelle likes to tackle genres and scenarios that we often view through rose-colored glasses and then smash those glasses to pieces.

He uses that same tactic in his latest film First Man. The story of astronaut Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) and the incredible effort it took to land him and Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll) on the Moon in 1969, the film disposes with the heroic mythologizing that’s so regularly utilized in film portrayals of NASA and America’s space program. Instead, it tells an incredibly small story — Armstrong’s struggle to cope with the death of his young daughter — and places it within the context of one of the most astonishing accomplishments in human history. It’s a feat, the film stresses, that was pulled off not by larger-than-life figures, but by groups of ordinary people who each paid an incredible cost.

It’s a breathtaking piece of filmmaking that’s filled with some of the most intense portrayals of spaceflight ever put on-screen. But for all its technical wonder, First Man’s focus on Armstrong’s relentless stoicism ends up feeling more like a hindrance than a revelation. It’s an epic, ambitious film, but it ends just shy of true greatness.

What’s the genre?

It’s a space exploration biopic that documents Armstrong’s family life in equal measure with the numerous breakthroughs, mistakes, and tragedies NASA experienced over the course of the Gemini and Apollo missions.

What’s it about?

First Man opens in the early 1960s, with Armstrong working as an experimental test pilot, flying the rocket-powered X-15 to the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. In the harrowing sequence, Armstrong is unable to descend, bouncing off the atmosphere until it seems like he’s in danger of floating off into space entirely. He’s able to resolve the situation, however, and lands safely. Back on the ground, Armstrong and his wife Janet (Claire Foy) are worried about their young daughter Karen who is suffering from a brain tumor. Armstrong is an engineer by trade, analytical and data-oriented, and he seems to view Karen’s illness as a problem to be solved. She eventually passes away, and in the hopes of making a fresh start, Armstrong applies and is accepted into NASA’s Gemini program.

The film then follows Armstrong’s experience within the project, from his training and the early Gemini missions to the Apollo program and the larger mission to reach the Moon. The film is painstakingly detailed in covering all aspects of the NASA missions, but just as much time is spent on documenting Armstrong’s family and the emotional fallout over the years. When team member and friend Elliot See (Patrick Fugit) is killed in a plane crash, Armstrong becomes withdrawn and non-communicative. When three astronauts, including Ed White (Jason Clarke) and Gus Grissom (Shea Whigham), are killed in a fire during a test for the Apollo 1 mission, Janet becomes even more alarmed about the human cost of the program — a cost that Armstrong, still unable to grapple with losing his daughter, nearly refuses to acknowledge at all. The tensions come to a head as Armstrong prepares for Apollo 11, the mission that will eventually land him on the Moon.

What’s it really about?

While First Man is a fascinating look at NASA and the Gemini and Apollo programs, Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer — who adapted James R. Hansen’s biography of the same name — are really interested in the pressure these grand accomplishments place upon the families of those involved. Armstrong is shown as a warm, loving father, but Karen’s death shuts him down. And while he has moments of lightness and joy with his sons Rick (Luke Winters) and Mark (Connor Blodgett), the work always seems to come first. He would rather shut Janet and the rest of his family out completely than acknowledge the real possibility that he might not come home from one of his missions. The specter of death is always there for Janet, whether through her interactions with Ed White’s widow (Olivia Hamilton) or the scrapes and bruises her husband comes home with after an accident with a lunar landing vehicle simulator.

Everyone within NASA seems to look ahead with the hubris that they can always solve the next problem, no matter how large, and it’s left to the families of the astronauts to call out exactly what’s at stake. “You’re a bunch of boys,” Janet tells Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler), the director of flight crew operations, while her husband is in a perilous situation during the Gemini 8 mission. “You don’t have anything under control.” It’s a direct repudiation of the swaggering personas in movies like The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, and it underscores a point that’s rarely discussed when the space program is portrayed in popular culture: when tragedy strikes, the larger program may continue, but the families who lose loved ones are permanently affected.

Is it good?

Chazelle has made an impeccably crafted film, so finely detailed and shot through with danger and menace that it often feels like this is the first time the realities of the 1960s space program have been accurately portrayed. The opening X-15 flights kick things off. It isn’t some hotshot bit of piloting designed to impress the audience with the lead character’s skills; Armstrong almost dies in the first minutes of First Man, and his situation doesn’t get any safer from there. Chazelle and his collaborators are intent on conveying the risk in space exploration in a way that feels immediate and real. Part of it is the events they choose to highlight: more things in First Man go wrong than right. But it’s also the way the film dwells on the ramifications of those failures, like the moments with Janet and the other wives or the way Armstrong has to rush out of a friend’s funeral reception because he simply can’t cope. Then there’s the cinematic execution of the space sequences.

It never feels like Armstrong and the other astronauts are riding around in state-of-the-art spacecraft that are impervious to harm. These vehicles groan and creak and shudder in unsettling ways. The simplest things go wrong at the most inopportune times. Spaceflight, First Man emphasizes, is messy and dangerous, and assuming that humanity has mastered any of it is the height of arrogance.

The production design is stunning across the board, re-creating not just the familiar Mission Control center, but things like the primitive multi-axis trailer and the intricate details of the Gemini space capsule. Chazelle and director of photography Linus Sandgren mix 16mm and 35mm film stocks for a grainy look that feels more like a period documentary than a modern-day biopic. It’s undeniably effective. They move to native IMAX footage when Armstrong finally goes to the lunar surface. It’s a tremendously clever use of the format: the change in detail, scope, and aspect ratio convey just how otherworldly and transformative stepping onto the surface of the Moon actually was. The transition is a magical moment. Viewers should seek out the film in proper IMAX presentation above all other possible formats.

But as detailed and thought-out as the visual presentation and mission sequences are, at times, it does feel like the lead character isn’t entirely realized. It’s not Gosling’s performance; he’s empathetic and watchable in the role, playing Armstrong as a man who dislikes ego and the spotlight and would rather sit down, focus, and do the work necessary to get the job done rather than talk about it. The emotional throughline of the character is where the film falls short. The death of Armstrong’s daughter is presented as an inciting incident that encourages him to join the space program, and he ultimately does have a moment of catharsis before the film is over. But Armstrong’s nature makes the story frustrating at times: he’s so stoic and reserved that it can be hard for the audience to engage with him. The space sequences and supporting cast are more than enough to carry the movie, but this film is clearly presented as Armstrong’s story. The fact that his emotional journey doesn’t feel fully articulated does hinder the film — especially since the entire point of the story is the human cost of space exploration. It leaves the audience with the feeling of watching an incredible historical document but perhaps not a perfectly engaging narrative.

What should it be rated?

The official rating is PG-13, and that sounds about right. There are deaths, language, and more nerve-rattling tension than anybody under 13 should deal with.

How can I actually watch it?

First Man opens in theaters on October 12th. (And I really wasn’t joking about IMAX earlier. Seek it out in a 1.43 IMAX presentation at all costs.)

Structured learning didn't serve me particularly well. I was kicked out of kindergarten for running away too many times, and I have the dubious distinction of having dropped out of two undergraduate programs and a doctoral business and administration program. I haven’t been tested, but have come to think of myself as “neuroatypical” in some way.

“Neurotypical” is a term used by the autism community to describe what society refers to as “normal.” According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in 59 children, and one in 34 boys, are on the autism spectrum—in other words, neuroatypical. That's 3 percent of the male population. If you add ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—and dyslexia, roughly one out of four people are not “neurotypicals.”

In NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman chronicles the history of such non-neurotypical conditions, including autism, which was described by the Viennese doctor Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner in Baltimore in the 1930s and 1940s. Asperger lived in Nazi Germany, which was actively euthanizing institutionalized children, and he defined a broad spectrum of children who were socially awkward. Others had extraordinary abilities and a "fascination with rules, laws and schedules," to use Silberman's words. Leo Kanner, on the other hand, described children who were more disabled. Kanner’s suggestion that the condition was activated by bad parenting made autism a source of stigma for parents and led to decades of work attempting to “cure” autism rather than developing ways for families, the educational system, and society to adapt to it.

Our schools in particular have failed such neurodiverse students, in part because they’ve been designed to prepare our children for typical jobs in a mass-production-based white- and blue-collar environment created by the Industrial Revolution. Students acquire a standardized skillset and an obedient, organized, and reliable nature that served society well in the past—but not so much today. I suspect that the quarter of the population who are diagnosed as somehow non-neurotypical struggle with the structure and the method of modern education, and many others probably do as well.

I often say that education is what others do to you and learning is what you do for yourself. But I think that even the broad notion of education may be outdated, and we need a completely new approach to empower learning: We need to revamp our notion of "education" and shake loose the ordered and linear metrics of the society of the past, when we were focused on scale and the mass production of stuff. Accepting and respecting neurodiversity is the key to surviving the transformation driven by the internet and AI, which is shattering the Newtonian predictability of the past and replacing it with a Heisenbergian world of complexity and uncertainty.

In Life, Animated, Ron Suskind tells the story of his autistic son Owen, who lost his ability to speak around his third birthday. Owen had loved the Disney animated movies before his regression began, and a few years into his silence it became clear he’d memorized dozens of Disney classics in their entirety. He eventually developed an ability to communicate with his family by playing the role, and speaking in the voices, of the animated characters he so loved, and he learned to read by reading the film credits. Working with his family, Owen recently helped design a new kind of screen-sharing app, called Sidekicks, so other families can try the same technique.

Owen’s story tells us how autism can manifest in different ways and how, if caregivers can adapt rather than force kids to "be normal," many autistic children survive and thrive. Our institutions, however, are poorly designed to deliver individualized, adaptive programs to educate such kids.

In addition to schools poorly designed for non-neurotypicals, our society traditionally has had scant tolerance or compassion for anyone lacking social skills or perceived as not "normal." Temple Grandin, the animal welfare advocate who is herself somewhere on the spectrum, contends that Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Mozart, and Nikola Tesla would have been diagnosed on the "autistic spectrum" if they were alive today. She also believes that autism has long contributed to human development and that "without autism traits we might still be living in caves." She is a prominent spokesperson for the neurodiversity movement, which argues that neurological differences must be respected in the same way that diversity of gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation is.

Despite challenges with some of the things that neurotypicals find easy, people with Asperger’s and other forms of autism often have unusual abilities. For example, the Israeli Defense Force's Special Intelligence Unit 9900, which focuses on analyzing aerial and satellite imagery, is partially staffed with people on the autism spectrum who have a preternatural ability to spot patterns. I believe at least some of Silicon Valley’s phenomenal success is because its culture places little value on conventional social and corporate values that prize age-based experience and conformity that dominates most of society and most institutions on the East Coast. It celebrates nerdy, awkward youth and has turned their super-human, “abnormal” powers into a money-making machine that is the envy of the world. (This new culture is wonderfully inclusive from a neurodiversity perspective but white-dude centric and problematic from a gender and race perspective.)

This sort of pattern recognition and many other unusual traits associated with autism are extremely well suited for science and engineering, often enabling a super-human ability to write computer code, understand complex ideas and elegantly solve difficult mathematical problems.

Unfortunately, most schools struggle to integrate atypical learners, even though it’s increasingly clear that interest-driven learning, project-based learning, and undirected learning seem better suited for the greater diversity of neural types we now know exist.

Ben Draper, who runs the Macomber Center for Self Directed Learning, says that while the center is designed for all types of children, kids whose parents identify them as on the autism spectrum often thrive at the center when they’ve had difficulty in conventional schools. Ben is part of the so-called unschooling movement, which believes that not only should learning be self-directed, in fact we shouldn't even focus on guiding learning. Children will learn in the process of pursuing their passions, the reasoning goes, and so we just need to get out of their way, providing support as needed.

Many, of course, argue that such an approach is much too unstructured and verges on irresponsibility. In retrospect, though, I feel I certainly would have thrived on “unschooling.” In a recent paper, Ben and my colleague Andre Uhl, who first introduced me to unschooling, argue that it not only works for everyone, but that the current educational system, in addition to providing poor learning outcomes, impinges on the rights of children as individuals.

MIT is among a small number of institutions that, in the pre-internet era, provided a place for non-neurotypical types with extraordinary skills to gather and form community and culture. Even MIT, however, is still trying to improve to give these kids the diversity and flexibility they need, especially in our undergraduate program.

I'm not sure how I'd be diagnosed, but I was completely incapable of being traditionally educated. I love to learn, but I go about it almost exclusively through conversations and while working on projects. I somehow kludged together a world view and life with plenty of struggle, but also with many rewards. I recently wrote a PhD dissertation about my theory of the world and how I developed it. Not that anyone should generalize from my experience—one reader of my dissertation said that I’m so unusual, I should be considered a "human sub-species." While I take that as a compliment, I think there are others like me who weren’t as lucky and ended up going through the traditional system and mostly suffering rather than flourishing. In fact, most kids probably aren’t as lucky as me and while some types are more suited for success in the current configuration of society, a huge percentage of kids who fail in the current system have a tremendous amount to contribute that we aren’t tapping into.

In addition to equipping kids for basic literacy and civic engagement, industrial age schools were primarily focused on preparing kids to work in factories or perform repetitive white-collar jobs. It may have made sense to try to convert kids into (smart) robotlike individuals who could solve problems on standardized tests alone with no smartphone or the internet and just a No. 2 pencil. Sifting out non-neurotypical types or trying to remediate them with drugs or institutionalization may have seemed important for our industrial competitiveness. Also, the tools for instruction were also limited by the technology of the times. In a world where real robots are taking over many of those tasks, perhaps we need to embrace neurodiversity and encourage collaborative learning through passion, play, and projects, in other words, to start teaching kids to learn in ways that machines can’t. We can also use modern technology for connected learning that supports diverse interests and abilities and is integrated into our lives and communities of interest.

At the Media Lab, we have a research group called Lifelong Kindergarten, and the head of the group, Mitchel Resnick, recently wrote a book by the same name. The book is about the group’s research on creative learning and the four Ps—Passion, Peers, Projects, and Play. The group believes, as I do, that we learn best when we are pursuing our passion and working with others in a project-based environment with a playful approach. My memory of school was "no cheating,” “do your own work,” "focus on the textbook, not on your hobbies or your projects," and "there’s time to play at recess, be serious and study or you'll be shamed"—exactly the opposite of the four Ps.

Many mental health issues, I believe, are caused by trying to “fix” some type of neurodiversity or by simply being insensitive or inappropriate for the person. Many mental “illnesses” can be “cured” by providing the appropriate interface to learning, living, or interacting for that person focusing on the four Ps. My experience with the educational system, both as its subject and, now, as part of it, is not so unique. I believe, in fact, that at least the one-quarter of people who are diagnosed as somehow non-neurotypical struggle with the structure and the method of modern education. People who are wired differently should be able to think of themselves as the rule, not as an exception.

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