book excerpt

In the vision of the “frictionless” city that is held by many in tech, where virtually every city service, human interaction, and consumer experience is to be mediated by an app or digital service that not only cuts out the need to deal…

Gabrielle Foster had been a fan of One Direction since she was 11 years old.“We all come from different backgrounds. We all bond over Harry, but we don’t personally know what’s going on in each other’s lives,” she told me. “I just want…

How much do we need humans in space?  How much do we want them there?  Astronauts embody the triumph of human imagination and engineering.  Their efforts shed light on the possibilities and problems posed by travel beyond our nurturing…

I know three people recovering from Covid at the moment. I know this because they told me.That might not seem like a big deal these days, when a Covid diagnosis often slips off the tongue as easily as mention of the common cold. But it…

Bate’s strategy pulled threads from the scientific debate about DDT and spun them into a tale that warned against Western-led public health. Malaria rates were climbing globally, he wrote, especially in Africa, and decades of…