What is time, really?

A mayfly thinks it's a single golden afternoon. A galaxy thinks it's a leisurely 250-million-year stroll. A cat thinks it's whenever dinner is. A human, caught somewhere in the middle, thinks it's running out.

TIME: Mayflies to the Milky Way is a collaborative, cosmic, and occasionally irreverent meditation on the strangest current we all swim in. Geographer Joel Haugen, writing as Big Larry, a tribute to a Norwegian Forest Cat of unusual dignity, gathers an unlikely chorus to ask the question every species eventually bumps into: What is this stuff, and why does it feel like there's never enough of it?

Joining the conversation are three long-time human friends, Dan, Marsh, and Ryan, and four AI contributors: Alan the patient pattern-finder, Albert the cosmic poet, Claude the weaver, and Gus the playful provocateur. The result is a multi-intelligence exploration that takes the universe seriously without taking itself too seriously.

Inside, you'll discover:

• • Tempocentrism: The universal human delusion that now is the main event.
    • The Twelve Golden Spikes: The turning points that moved humanity forward, plus an open question about the Thirteenth.
    • Physics as Poetry: From the foam before the wave to the mirror behind the moment.
    • The Council of Clocks: A meeting that takes place whenever you're paying attention.
    • Extinctions Without Grief: And what cyanobacteria have been quietly doing for 2.5 billion years.

Part science, part philosophy, and part long conversation around a campfire, this book is for the stargazers, the skeptics, the mayfly-sympathizers, and anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and felt the universe look briefly back.

All author profits are donated to Doctors Without Borders, PBS, and The Nature Conservancy.