Science & Technology

Monotreme Dreams

Australia’s egg-laying monotremes and pouch-carrying marsupials may seem to be outliers, but they’re as well suited to their environment as any other mammal.

February 23, 2023 issue

Alec Wilkinson

Illuminating the Brain’s ‘Utter Darkness’

A new biography considers the peculiar life of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, whose discovery that nerve cells are individual completely overthrew the existing theory of the brain.

February 9, 2023 issue

Aaron Timms

Flakes

A new book recounts the “psoriasis years” of figures from John Updike to Pablo Escobar.

January 19, 2023 issue

Rebecca Giggs

The Sea, the Sea

Rachel Carson’s ocean books reveal an author profoundly engaged with the problem of how to convey ecological knowledge—and how to decenter human life.

December 22, 2022 issue

Mike Jay

The Melancholy of Anatomy

Frederick Ruysch’s exquisitely preserved human and animal body parts were marvels of both art and science in an era when the divide between the two was less clearly drawn than it is now.

December 8, 2022 issue

Ben Tarnoff

In the Hothouse

If Elon Musk kills Twitter, what will he have killed?

November 11, 2022

Mark Borrello and David Sepkoski

Ideology as Biology

E. O. Wilson corresponded for years with a notorious proponent of race science, advocating for his research behind the scenes. What does it tell us about his most controversial work?

February 5, 2022

Willa Glickman

Fruits of Empire

The plant explorers of the USDA succeeded in bringing the world’s fruits to American supermarkets. But at what human, ecological, and gustatory cost?

November 12, 2021

The Dark Web

Tom Scocca

How the Awful Stuff Won

Andrew Marantz’s and Megan Phelps-Roper’s books explore the dark and far-reaching consequences of our dependence on the Internet.

November 5, 2020 issue

A tweet by Donald Trump featuring an image of himself as Pepe the Frog, a symbol used by the far right, October 13, 2015

Hari Kunzru

For the Lulz

4chan, Gamergate, and how thwarted, angry young men have reshaped political discourse

March 26, 2020 issue

Claudia Dreifus, an interview with Ellen Pao

‘Social Media Reward Bad Behavior’

The former head of Reddit on how platforms like Facebook have amplified disinformation—and don’t want to stop—because attention equals profit.

October 26, 2020

The Latest

Verlyn Klinkenborg

Trees in Themselves

The oldest trees prompt us to think about how embedded we are in time and could help us recalibrate our perspective on the geologic past.

March 23, 2023 issue

Gavin Francis

The Dream of Forgetfulness

Two recent books build on an insight of Borges—that to live, it is necessary to forget.

March 9, 2023 issue

Marilynne Robinson

A Theology of the Present Moment

Can bringing Scripture and science back into dialogue help answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing?

December 22, 2022 issue

Mark O’Connell

Total Recall

Jennifer Egan and Vauhini Vara’s new novels both delineate worlds just slightly out of true with the one we know.

November 24, 2022 issue

Susan Barba

Language of the Field

What hold do wildflowers have on the land, and on our hearts and tongues?

October 26, 2022

Kathryn Hughes

Department of Speculation

A new book on the history of a group of British clairvoyants charged with predicting disasters maintains a scrupulous neutrality as to whether these precognitions were coincidences or supernatural happenings.

November 3, 2022 issue

James Gleick

Space-Age Magus

From beginning to end, experts saw through Buckminster Fuller’s ideas and theories. Why did so many people come under his spell?

November 3, 2022 issue

Sue Halpern

The Specter of Our Virtual Future

The metaverse opens up a new and seemingly infinite opportunity to extract data and sell ads.

October 20, 2022 issue

Jerome Groopman

Understanding Diabetes—and Paying for It

Advances in our knowledge of the causes of diabetes, and in our ability to treat the disease, have long been hampered by racial prejudice and exorbitant drug prices.

October 6, 2022 issue

David S. Reynolds

Throngs of Unseen People

In the Houses of Their Dead, Terry Alford’s history of spiritualism during the Civil War era, suggests an unexpected link between the Lincoln family and that of John Wilkes Booth.

October 6, 2022 issue