The story of two encounters—one in life, the other on the page. | Continue reading
The fault was not in my stars, nor in myself, but in my fungiform papillae. | Continue reading
Science is objective. Scientists are not. Can an “iron rule” explain how they’ve changed the world anyway? | Continue reading
The desire to protect children may put their long-term well-being at stake. | Continue reading
The desire to protect children may put their long-term well-being at stake. | Continue reading
James Baker thinks Trump is “nuts,” but he voted for him once—and may soon do so again. | Continue reading
The modern-day human-resources practice is rooted in avant-garde philosophy. | Continue reading
We overlook the environmental damage of listening to songs online. | Continue reading
Forget artificial sweeteners. Researchers are now developing new forms of real sugar, to deliver sweetness with fewer calories. But tricking our biology is no easy feat. | Continue reading
Millions of human artifacts circle the Earth. Can we clean them up before they cause a disaster? | Continue reading
As we celebrate our friend this week, we, his readers, get the best gifts. | Continue reading
The disaster encapsulates a moment in which both science and the everyday rhythms of American life seem to be under assault. | Continue reading
A conversation with the English comedian about artistic inspiration, cultural appropriation, and tabloid journalism. | Continue reading
Faced with choosing between another right-wing Justice and losing his control of the Senate, no one who knows the Majority Leader well thinks he’d hesitate to do whatever is necessary to stay in power. | Continue reading
As a litigator, Ginsburg brought cases before the Court that transformed its view of gender issues. Yet, one observer says, “she’s very cautious, conservative in a Burkean sense.” | Continue reading
Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation. | Continue reading
Experts estimate a thirty-five-per-cent chance of a U.S. civil war over the next ten to fifteen years. What do historians of the Civil War think? | Continue reading
Designer proteins could help us build new materials, clean up the environment, and even fight COVID-19. | Continue reading
The ultimate cause of the disaster was the drive to raise profits at any cost—and the cult of the stock price, to which so many venerable companies have conceded. | Continue reading
Virtual-reality coffee shops and party-simulation apps are aiming to help you gossip and mingle more realistically online. | Continue reading
The West Coast’s wildfires, and the ecological crisis they portend, have never been more visible. | Continue reading
The F.B.I. tried to recruit an Iranian scientist as an informant. When he balked, the payback was brutal. | Continue reading
Trump’s Presidency, and the risk that it will recur despite his persistent unpopularity, reflects a deeper malignancy in our Constitution that must be addressed. | Continue reading
Sue Halpern on the mobile app for Donald Trump’s reëlection campaign, which was developed by the ad broker and software company Phunware, and how it gathers users’ data in an invasive way reminiscent of the methods of Cambridge Analytica. | Continue reading
Immigrant struggles in America forged a bond that became even tighter after my mother’s A.L.S. diagnosis. Then, as COVID-19 threatened, Chinese nationalists began calling us traitors to our country. | Continue reading
Pauli Murray was an architect of two of the most important social-justice movements of the twentieth century. Why isn’t she better known? | Continue reading
The spectre of foreign manipulation looms over the coming election. But in focussing on the tactics of the aggressors we overlook our weaknesses as victims. | Continue reading
Fifteen years after an illness rendered her largely housebound, the best-selling writer is releasing a novel that feels like a surreal meditation on life in quarantine. | Continue reading
Vaccines are making progress, but they may not defeat the virus completely. Luckily, other therapies are on the way, too. | Continue reading
The United States has deepening political and cultural cleavages—possibly too many to repair soon, or, perhaps, at all. | Continue reading
Vaccines are making progress, but they may not defeat the virus completely. Luckily, other therapies are on the way, too. | Continue reading
There’s still money to be made, but it’s mostly not the creators who are getting rich. | Continue reading
The key to taming the pandemic will be both a new commitment to “assurance testing” and a new vision of what public health really means. | Continue reading
A theatre company has spent years bringing catharsis to the traumatized. In the coronavirus era, that’s all of us. | Continue reading
“Machines Like Me” is a retrofuturist drama that takes on the ethics of both artificial intelligence and all-too-human intimacy. | Continue reading
At the height of his powers, the Black Nationalist leader was assassinated, and the government botched the investigation of his murder. | Continue reading
The parenting expert Emily Oster weighs the costs and benefits. | Continue reading
Lyonnais rice pilaf is made in the oven, and it achieves a surprisingly delicate puffy texture, as if it has been gently but moistly roasted. | Continue reading
When I think about all the time I frittered away today, it agitates me, and I jump on Wikipedia to look up famous nineteenth-century circuses. | Continue reading
The inventor and entrepreneur prophesies a future in which self-testing is one more morning ritual, between brushing teeth and putting on a pot of coffee. | Continue reading
Oh, you’re drowning? Focus on the positive in the situation. | Continue reading
The contentious writer, who liked to say that, after fifty, litigation replaces sex, had very specific plans for his burial. | Continue reading
The composer has infiltrated every phase of movie history, from silent pictures to superhero blockbusters. | Continue reading
The “Skyrise for Harlem” project speaks with resonant clarity in this summer of uprisings. | Continue reading
Her poetry conjures the worlds of the Iliad and the Odyssey with startling, sometimes vexing, beauty. | Continue reading
Humans have been getting bored for centuries, if not millennia. Now there’s a whole field to study the sensation, at a time when it may be more rampant than ever. | Continue reading
A new material may transform computers, cell phones, and cancer treatments—if we can just figure out how to use it. John Colapinto reports. | Continue reading
Ultima IV was a pioneer in forcing players to grapple with morality. | Continue reading