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The Mystery of the Cosmos: What Exactly Are We Looking For?
The key to understanding the universe may lie in grasping the ways it replicates itself....
Science & Technology
Blade Runner: Grass and Our Future
Louise Schiavone explains how leaves of grass in all their variety are “now a piece of the complex puzzle that might hold off carbon overload.”...
The Invention of “Xenophobia”
George Makari describes xenophobia’s complicated history as a concept, and reveals the curious role of a lone stenographer....
Elites Against Extinction: The Dark History of a Cultural Paranoia
Our ideas about human extinction, including how human extinction might be prevented, have a dark history, explains Tyler Harper....
Why DNA Is No Key to Social Equality: On Kathryn Paige Harden’s “The Genetic Lottery”
A review of Kathryn Paige Harden’s “The Genetic Lottery.”...
The Computer Says … What?
Reviewing “Making AI Intelligible,” Paul Dicken concludes it might be easier “to build a human that can talk to a computer, rather than the other way around.”...
Fair Play on the Marcellus Shale
Reviewing “Up to Heaven and Down to Hell,” Jonah Walters describes the tragedy of the commons from the inside, as a member of the community in question....
The Bigoted Roots of Epidemiology
In reviewing “Maladies of Empire,” John Galbraith Simmons shows how an understanding of colonial medicine and slavery needs to better inform our present....
AI Critique 2.0
Leif Weatherby surveys the new frontier of AI critique....
The Dream Economy
All the talk of colonizing Mars is a dangerous pipe dream that deflects from the less glamorous task of trying to keep Earth habitable....
Dissecting “Noise”
Vasant Dhar considers “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment,” the new book by Daniel Kahneman, Cass R. Sunstein, and Olivier Sibony....
The Many Faces of Global Trauma
A newly minted doctor specializing in mental health finds Western concepts of trauma don’t have as much meaning when imported abroad....
Of Viruses and Licenses: Lessons from COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Debates
Mario Biagioli takes on the heated debates currently being enacted in op-eds around the compulsory licensing of COVID-19....
Grieving Earth
Olivia Schwob finds Nathaniel Rich’s latest collection, “Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade,” a little “too easy.”...
Gods of Small Things
Victoria Lee reviews "Soju: A Global History" and "The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life."...
A Doctor’s Dissent
A doctor attacks those maverick doctors who lambaste the medical profession while channeling its hubris....
The Inflection Pointillists
Conjuring the image of an “inflection point” is a favored device among those who want us to believe that we are in the midst of a world-historic transformation....
Horrible Sanity: An Edgar Allan Poe for Our Time
Henry Cowles finds much to appreciate in John Tresch’s new biography of Edgar Allan Poe....
Be Skeptical of Thought Leaders
Evan Selinger picks apart Susan Liautaud’s “cheerful boosterism.”...
Survival Strategies
Josh Berson’s new book shows how we can adapt our “skills reservoir” for an era of climate crisis....
The Hubris of Big Data
Firmin DeBrabander warns against the dangers of increasingly refined data analysis....
Caveat Editor: Competing Takes on CRISPR
John Dupré considers four new books on the history and ethics of CRISPR by Kevin Davies, Eben Kirksey, Henry T. Greely, and Walter Isaacson....
To the Grave: Secrets, Sins, and Nuclear Insecurity
Joshua Roebke reviews a much-heralded book on the troubled history of nuclear secrecy in the US....
Behind the Numbers: Aggregated Risks in the Age of COVID
While we know more than ever about how health and disease work, experts’ inability to speak in specific terms makes it easy for them to be ignored....
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