Technology

The Death and Life of the Author

Art, literature, and authorship in the age of generative AI.

The Meaning of the FTX Meltdown

The crypto exchange’s spectacular failure is the product of a bankrupt corporate culture.

Medicine for the People

As more and more doctors awaken to the political determinants of health, the U.S. medical profession needs a deeper vision for the ethical meanings of care.

An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine

Colorblind solutions have failed to achieve racial equity in health care. We need both federal reparations and real institutional accountability.

Use Sunlight Locally (or Lose It)

A new “solar homesteading law” could harness rays of sun that fall on roofs and parking lots in cities and advance the aims of energy democracy.

DNA and Our Twenty-First-Century Ancestors

Home DNA ancestry kits include no ancestors, instead comparing customers to other present-day people based on assumptions about race and ethnicity. So what are they actually selling?

Medicine’s Machine Learning Problem

As Big Data tools reshape health care, biased datasets and unaccountable algorithms threaten to further disempower patients.

How Americans Came to Distrust Science

For a century, critics of all political stripes have challenged the role of science in society. Repairing distrust today requires confronting those arguments head on.

Racism and Respiration

COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black communities is just one of many respiratory inequities shaped by systemic racism.

How to Fix the Climate

Diplomacy isn’t enough. To decarbonize the economy, we must integrate bottom-up, local experimentation with top-down, global cooperation.

Our Vaccine Infrastructure Needs a Radical Overhaul

We must reimagine how to make life-saving vaccines available to everyone.

How to Fix the Climate

Biden should rejoin the Paris Agreement, but diplomacy isn’t enough. To decarbonize the economy, we must integrate bottom-up, local experimentation with top-down, global cooperation.

How to Talk about COVID-19 in Africa

To ask why COVID-19 hasn’t been deadlier in Africa is to suggest that more Africans should be dying. We need better questions.

To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity

Waiting to ensure uninterrupted power for everyone as we transition away from fossil fuels will cost too much time—and too many lives.

The Trouble with Carbon Pricing

Only a bold approach that centers politics can meet the scale of the climate crisis.

How Early Modern Empire Changed Medicine

Global trade, enslaved labor, and colonial warfare created demands for medicines that would work for anyone, anywhere. That pressure to view patients as interchangeable remains with us today.

The Economic Case for a People’s Vaccine

Ensuring a COVID-19 vaccine is available to all makes both moral and economic sense.

The Racist Foundation of Nuclear Architecture

On the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, it is clear that white supremacy sustains the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Steps to a Better COVID-19 Response

There’s no silver bullet, but local experiments and global experiences can help us control the pandemic.

Climate Change’s New Ally: Big Finance

Huge investors like BlackRock are forcing corporations to take action on emissions. But what does their power mean for democracy?

Who Pays for Cheap Language Instruction?

The industry’s hidden costs.

From Pandemic Facts to Pandemic Policies

The debate over pandemic response is not only about the facts. It’s also about values.

What Would Health Security Look Like?

Struggles for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal are two sides of the same coin.

The Case Against Mars

Contrary to the boosterism of billionaires, the need for space colonization must be argued for, not assumed. And the arguments aren’t good.

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