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Current Issue

No. 71

Winter 2023

The Joy of Losing Your Phone

App life has freed us from the kindness of strangers. Is it any wonder we feel so alone?

A Humanism of the Abyss

At a moment when people who don’t share our identity feel alien, Oliver Sacks’s classic book about reaching catatonic patients has much to teach us.

No Other Options

Newly revealed documents depict a Canadian euthanasia regime that efficiently ushers the vulnerable to a “beautiful” death.

Alexander Raikin

Who’s Afraid of Cowardice?

We’re brain-fried on superhero fistfights. It’s time to learn from heroes who run away.

Arcs of Life

A just society does not kill suffering people, it shares their burden.

Can There Be a Conservative Futurism?

The retreat from time is not a winning answer to our tech malaise.

When the Machine Opts In to You

The self-help response to oppressive ways of living only plays into the problem.

Joel Cuthbertson

Is Nuclear Returning Too Fast or Too Slow?

Bringing back the promise of the atomic era without repeating its mistakes

Thomas Hochman and Taylor Dotson

The Long Delay Is Nearly Over

After a half-century of going nowhere, in 2022 American space travel got moving again. Here’s what changed — and how to make it stick.

Phoneless, Carless, Friendless

An essay trio by Clare Coffey on living under lonelytech when you can’t beat the system

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Fall 2022

Bacon Bacon Shakespeare Spy

One brilliant madwoman’s quest to show that the Bard’s works were secretly penned by the father of science, at war with his own creation

The Secret Life of Leftovers

Cheese, curry, beer: We can thank our ancestors who put food scraps to creative use. What we’re leaving our children is garbage.

Kitty Eats the Internet

Cat memes fill a gaping void in our online lives.

Antón Barba-Kay

Middle Seat to the Moon

How to keep the thrill alive once billionaires make space travel routine

Charles T. Rubin

A Nuclear Renaissance?

Stalled for decades, U.S. atomic power seems set for a comeback. Here’s what it’ll take to get it right this time.

Thomas Hochman and Nate Hochman

How to Search for Life on Mars

First, stop refusing to look.

Robert Zubrin, Steven Benner, Jan Špaček

Summer 2022

How Stewart Made Tucker

A world of authentic, post-spin journalism: The dream Jon Stewart spent a decade making real is now America’s waking nightmare. What did he get so wrong?

The Case for a Pandemic Moonshot

We cannot accept the same awful options when the next virus comes. Instead, let’s build our way out of the problem.

Tom Ridge and Asha M. George

Unsustainable Alarmism

The crisis mindset is a finite resource — and we’ve exhausted it. From Covid to climate change, we need a new way to manage chronic problems.

Was Fusionism a Fluke?

Why technocratic tyranny made allies of traditionalism and libertarianism

Howe Whitman, III

Stuck Between Climate Doom and Denial

The failure of a mega-popular critique of climate science shows why we need a third option in the debate.

Roger Pielke, Jr.

The Supergenius at the End of the World

In Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi, democracy is an obstacle to Muskian great men saving us all.

Spring 2022

Reality Is Just a Game Now

Scoring points, hunting for clues, building plotlines, revealing the Grand Narrative... Why are people acting like the national fracture is fun?

Reading Ourselves to Death

This essay is not real.

Hell Is Ourselves

On the creepiness of an Internet that caters to who it thinks we are

Therapy Beyond Good and Evil

A nonjudgmental psychology is failing patients who need to hear hard truths.

Reading Ourselves to Death

This essay is not real.

Hell Is Ourselves

On the creepiness of an Internet that caters to who it thinks we are

Therapy Beyond Good and Evil

A nonjudgmental psychology is failing patients who need to hear hard truths.

Reality Minus

On the depressing fantasy of minds in simulated worlds

David Bentley Hart

Reformation in the Church of Science

How the truth monopoly was broken up

Andrea Saltelli and Daniel Sarewitz

Something Happened By Us: A Demonology

A theory of why we’re all going nuts online

The Coronavirus Pandemic

Danger: Caution Ahead

We let the precautionary principle run wild during Covid. We needed proportionality too.

Gabrielle Bauer

January 25, 2022

Is This Still an Emergency?

As with 9/11, we cannot sustain crisis politics for years after a moment of unity passes.

M. Anthony Mills

January 21, 2022

Sacrifice Is Not a Therapy

Covid doesn’t care how hard we fight it — only about what works.

Leah Libresco Sargeant

What Is the CDC?

Eleven ways of looking at the troubled agency

January 25, 2022

Is This Still an Emergency?

As with 9/11, we cannot sustain crisis politics for years after a moment of unity passes.

M. Anthony Mills

January 21, 2022

Sacrifice Is Not a Therapy

Covid doesn’t care how hard we fight it — only about what works.

Leah Libresco Sargeant

What Is the CDC?

Eleven ways of looking at the troubled agency

Our aim is a culture in which science and technology work for, not on, human beings.

About Us Explore Projects

Staying Human

A More Natural Science

On the Modern Project

The Technological Condition

Mind & Human Nature

A More Political Science

Beyond Earth

The Good Earth

The Practice of Science

Featured Collections

Special Series

Recovering the Organism

Symposium | Winter 2022

Debating the “Public Interest” Online

Responses to “How to Fix Social Media” by Nicholas Carr

From the Archives

After Climate Despair

The hope for a global conversion to austerity has failed to stop climate change. What comes next?

Winter/Spring 2013

Do Elephants Have Souls?

On the evidence for non-human intelligence, awareness, and emotion

Shop Class as Soulcraft

The case for the manual trades

Matthew B. Crawford

Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls

Biotechnology and the pursuit of perfection

The Human Explorer

Why sending robots is not enough

How Can I Possibly Be Free?

Why the neuroscientific case against free will is wrong