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Humans have spent decades trying to teach other animals our languages—sometimes for convenience or amusement, sometimes out of scientific curiosity—but we’ve made little effort to learn theirs. Today, as a virus from another species upends human society, the usefulness of communicating with animals on their own terms is suddenly more imaginable.

Disinformed to Death

Jonathan Freedland

When a pandemic is raging, it becomes harder to deny that rigorous, truthful information is a mortal necessity. No one need explain the risks of false information when one can point to, say, the likely consequences of Americans’ coming to believe they can deflect the virus by injecting themselves with bleach.

Speech and Slavery in the West Indies

Fara Dabhoiwala

Slavery was foundational to Britain’s prosperity and rise to global power.

A Horse’s Remorse

Adam Thirlwell

On ‘BoJack Horseman’

The New Nuclear Threat

Jessica T. Mathews

A second nuclear arms race has begun—one that could be more dangerous than the first.

130 Degrees

Bill McKibben

This is going to be a century of crises, many of them more dangerous than what we’re living through now.

Buy In

Rae Armantrout

A poem

Unpresidented

Fintan O’Toole

Toxic residues from the Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the so-called war on terror continue to flow into American politics

Clear, Inclusive, and Lasting

Mark Mazower

Eric Hobsbawm’s works themselves are his memorial. What is there to learn from his biography?

Sun Ra: ‘I’m Everything and Nothing’

Namwali Serpell

The photographer Ming Smith’s pictures of Sun Ra from 1978 beautifully capture his energy.

How to Fix Child Poverty

Jason DeParle

The National Academies estimate that child poverty costs the country $800 billion to $1.1 trillion a year—including lower adult earnings, worse health, and higher crime.

Wanting Wrong

Anne Enright

On Miranda Popkey’s ‘Topics of Conversation’ and Ariana Harwicz’s ‘Die, My Love’

Less Punishment, More Justice

David Cole

We need to rethink the institutional structures that will determine criminal justice policy for years to come.

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Ransacking the Republic

Walter M. Shaub Jr.

Trump and his Republican wrecking crew are ripping out the floorboards under the government ethics program.

Democracy’s Red Line

Hari Kunzru

On Masha Gessen’s ‘Surviving Autocracy’

Just Use Your Thinking Pump!

Jessica Riskin

What is the scientific method, and when, where, and how did it become, as the kids say, a thing?

What Is College Worth?

Jonathan Zimmerman

As tuition and student debt continue to skyrocket, it’s worth asking how much longer we can sustain this system.

A Legacy of Torture in Chicago

Peter C. Baker

Laurence Ralph’s ‘The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence’

An Ethical Path to a Covid Vaccine

Carl Elliott

Many idealistic young people seem willing to risk their health for the common good. The question is how to make Phase I studies safe and fair.

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The Sickness in Our Food Supply

Michael Pollan

The pandemic is making the case not only for a different food system but for a radically different diet as well.

What Kind of Country Do We Want?

Marilynne Robinson

Here is the first question that must be asked: What have we done with America?

The Pillage of India

Christopher de Bellaigue

William Dalrymple’s ‘The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire’ and Shashi Tharoor’s ‘Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India’

The Housing Vultures

Francesca Mari

The investors who exploited the 2008 financial crisis are dictating the bailout of this one.

Sex and Sincerity

Sigrid Nunez

What happens when someone sets out to write fiction that is “100 percent pornographic and 100 percent high art”?

Horace’s How-To

Gregory Hays

“Human” is the opening word of the ‘Ars Poetica.’ This is unlikely to be an accident.

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When Will We Care About Domestic Violence?

Caroline Fraser

For centuries, men have been saying, “I’ll tear her all to pieces,” and doing it, too

The Defender of Differences

Kwame Anthony Appiah

On Franz Boas and his critics

Why We Need Postal Democracy

David Cole

In the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans may have discovered the ultimate voter suppression tactic.

Brand New Dems?

Joseph O’Neill

Democrats are terrible at “messaging.” It’s time to fix that.

Getting Away With It

Andrew Martin

Nell Zink’s books are defined by a fervent restlessness, a desire to ignore the strictures that usually confine the contemporary novel.

Botch on the Rhine

Max Hastings

A meticulous and justly angry account of one of the great cock-ups of World War II

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