Science and Technology
Does Our Sustainable Future Start in the Mine?
Rare earth mining will disrupt local climate resilience. Who should pay the price?
How Can We Trust Science?
Despite debates about scientific certainty, we do not need 100 percent consensus on a scientific claim to accept it as true.
Dreams of Green Hydrogen
In place of public-private partnerships, we should revive the Pan-African ambitions of the green developmental state.
Is There a Cure for Medical Racism?
From unequal rates of COVID-19 death and hospitalization to biased pulse oximeters, medicine must reckon with the racism in its midst.
Public Trust Is a Political Problem—Not Just an Epistemic One
It won’t be solved through fact checking.
Why Biden’s New Industrial Policy Won’t Work Without Reforms
The passage of the administration’s Inflation Reduction Act should be celebrated, but without explicit corporate guardrails it’s doomed.
The Inflated Promise of Science Education
Building public trust requires far more than the conveyance of facts and instruction in scientific thinking.
Science Fiction as Poetry
In her new book, Danish poet Olga Ravn writes with open love, pity, and compassion for her strange yet familiar creations.
How Capitalism—Not a Few Bad Actors—Destroyed the Internet
Twenty-five years of neoliberal political economy are to blame for today’s regime of surveillance advertising, and only public policy can undo it.
Endless Ice
Inspired by the rediscovery of Shackleton’s HMS Endurance, we revisit two centuries of lessons in leadership from getting trapped in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea.
How a New Generation Is Combatting Digital Surveillance
Younger voices are using technology to respond to the needs of marginalized communities and nurture Black healing and liberation.
Queering the Dating App
Tinder and OkCupid should drop the gender binary. Doing so would help all users—queer and straight alike.
The New Old Geography
Pioneering Afro-Brazilian geographer Milton Santos sought to redeem the field from its methodological fragmentation and colonial legacies.
How the Other Half Dies
Until COVID-19, tuberculosis killed more people each year than any other infectious disease. Its rising toll is increasingly fueled by mass incarceration.
On Antitrust, Don’t Take Big Tech’s Word for It
Corporate restructurings are not a cure-all, but they would tilt the balance of power toward ordinary Americans.
How Medicine Must Change for Endemic COVID-19
To meet the challenge of enduring spread in the years to come, we must prioritize primary care and community health over the profit-driven status quo.
Sunlight as Infrastructure
Sunlight-friendly architecture could heat and illuminate buildings without expending any electricity.
Simon Stålenhag’s Alternate Histories
Amazon’s Tales from the Loop has introduced a new audience to the speculative worlds of the Swedish artist, whose books depict worlds in which humanity has, in one way or another, run afoul of technology.
Get our newsletter
Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975
Registered 501(c)(3) organization
Help Us Stay Paywall-Free
Become a Member