In 'Project Hail Mary,' a human and an alien cooperate because survival demands it. We aren't doing the same.

Evolutionary mismatch explains why we treat neighbors as enemies despite sharing 99.9 percent of our DNA.

Love is the evolutionary glue that holds our tribe together. A tribe divided falls.

All human beings are neighbors. Our IRL Project Hail Mary begins with living the truth we already know.

Ryan Gosling saves the world, or rather, his character does, in the new sci-fi movie, Project Hail Mary. Audiences are showing up in force. The film opened to $141 million gross worldwide with a 95 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics are calling it the first great movie of 2026.

I read Andy Weir’s novel that the movie was based upon and loved it. The premise is simple: The sun is dying, Earth has one desperate shot, and a lone science teacher named Ryland Grace is humanity’s last hope. He’s the unlikely hero of Project Hail Mary.

But what makes the story transcend typical sci-fi is not the science. It is Rocky, and his connection with Grace.

Rocky is an alien from a completely different star system. It has different biology, senses...seemingly everything. Grace and Rocky cannot breathe the same air and initially cannot even communicate. They are as different as two intelligent beings could possibly be.

And yet, they discover the neighbor in one another. They are able to become partners and then friends.

Grace and Rocky both wanted the same thing: to survive and save their worlds. That shared goal became the bridge between two beings who had nothing else in common. By helping each other, they both improved their chances. The bond came through the cooperation, not before it. That is the lesson for us too. We all want to survive and thrive. That shared........

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