The Year That Was and Wasn’t
We asked some of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2021, and what were the least?
science
A collection of 53 issues
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
We asked some of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2020, and what were the least?
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
We asked some of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2019, and what were the least?
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
We asked more than two dozen of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2018, and what were the least?
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
Yes, 2017 went off the rails. But what pushed it? We asked 29 of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of the past 12 months, and what were the least?
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
The past year has been bad—but what made it bad, more or less? To find out, we asked a group of writers and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2016, and what were the least?
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
We asked writers and thinkers to tell us: What were the most important events of 2015—and what were the least?
The Loss
To understand everything wrong about health care in America today, look to a horrifying trend in amputation.
The Wayback Machine
How nostalgia works and why social media may destroy it altogether, or restore it to its original purpose.
The Art and Science of Forgetting Everything
A conversation with Sarah Hepola, author of the bestselling Blackout, about investigating the worst kind of memories—those you never had.
My Letter From Oliver Sacks
Migraines, 3D magic, and an unlikely correspondence from one “incredibly stereoscopic person” to another.
Fight or Flight
A near-death experience makes this week’s International Asteroid Day a little more tricky to celebrate.
Our Dino Love Will Never Die
Dinosaurs haven’t been super-popular for 65 million years—it only feels that way. Fans and experts explain our obsession with dead monsters.
A Recipe for Disasters
Calculating the probable dates for very bad things—a catastrophic solar megastorm; Seattle destroyed by earthquake—that are likely to occur.
What Think-Piece Writers Get Wrong About Lobotomies
The web is full of pundits looking to turn every topic into think-bait. One writer commits himself to thinking much, much deeper.
Binge Reading Disorder
The typical American consumes more than 100,000 words a day and remembers none of them.
Gods and Kings and Middle Managers
Recent astronomical discoveries have expanded our understanding of the universe—and messed up godhead performance reviews.
My Time of Not Dying
Call it Kreider’s Law: You can’t be grateful to be alive your entire life. Especially when there's an arms race going on inside your head.
Do You Believe in Ghosts?
Ignore the critics: Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” is not only a serious, complex comment on space policy, it’s a heartbreaking, philosophical look at the value of time.
This Will Be the Year That Was
If you can't wait to find out what 2015 will bring—from John Galliano's Cosby sweaters to Jenny McCarthy getting polio—wait no longer. (Spoilers ahead.)
Queen of the Jungle
Orangutans are some of humans’ closest relatives, genetically. They also rarely exhibit aggression, despite how we've abused them. One is different.
Terrapin Station
All the magic of the Mojave Desert, or the Amazon rainforest, can be found in the salt marshes of New Jersey.
The Influencing Machine
When a genetic disease looms, we’re more like our parents than we’d like to believe—and when we become parents, that fear only grows.
This Will Be the Year That Was
At the dawn of 2014, we anticipate what will happen in our new year. This is what will happen.
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
We gathered writers and thinkers to consider everything that happened over the past 12 months and asked them: What were the most important events of 2013—and what were the least?
The Champagne of Maine
The top-selling spirit in Maine is a coffee-flavored brandy, something that could be straight out of old medicine texts. A hunt for the origins of a staple, in the northern woods and waterfronts.
Where the Himalayan Moss Grows
Going on a five-day cleanse—subsisting on a diet of shots, smoothies, very few actual foods, and no caffeine—leads to visions of apocalypse. From 2013, a quest to find the seven billionth child on Earth.
Explaining the Inexplicable
Readers of science reporting often find their heads spinning. Some of the science reporters do, too. A look at how the best of them make inexpertise an asset.
Start of Darkness
The world of the myope is often a nicer place—faces lack wrinkles, and trees seem to be painted by Monet. Then, during a visit to Moscow, a black spot appears.
The Private Lives of the Cryptozoologists
Personal collections groomed over decades gather signs of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other hidden animals—crumbs of a fuller truth preserved by citizen scientists. One such collection in Maine is open to the public.
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
We gathered writers and thinkers to consider everything that happened over the past 12 months and asked them: What were the most important events of 2012—and what were the least?
The Heretic
For decades, the U.S. government banned medical studies of the effects of LSD. But for one longtime, elite researcher, the promise of mind-blowing revelations was just too tempting.
Eyes Wide Open
The next time jet lag ruins your day—exhausted, yawning, blurry-eyed, fiending for any means of correction—what if you were to stop looking for a cure inside purgatory and, instead, embrace the cloud?
H.P. Lovecraft, Author, Is Dead
Today marks the 75th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft's death. From Stephen King's It to “The Call of Cthulhu,” a survey of the 20th century's greatest horror writer's afterlife of influence.
Apocalypse How
Big-budget films tell us earthquakes are bad, volcanic eruptions can be catastrophic, and meteorite strikes—barring the presence of Bruce Willis—may kill us all. Seeking expert advice on how scared we should be.
The Year That Was
We gathered writers and thinkers around the world and asked them to sift through the past year of revolutions, deaths, discoveries, and breakthroughs to answer: What was the most important event of 2011?
Special Topics in Mindboggling Physics
Popular science books are all well and good until they ask you to picture a hundred cats playing volleyball in the fourteenth dimension. Writing lessons for astrophysicists.
Behind the Pulse
When I collapsed in public two weeks ago, I could hear everything happening around me, but could barely respond. Making sense of it all was even more difficult.
The Surrogate Life
Being unemployed, and bearing colossal amounts of debt, can drive you to rash measures. Discovering the difficulty of renting out one’s womb.
In the Event That You Have Accidentally Swallowed the Higgs Boson
Ingesting a wily particle is no laughing matter. Ten steps of concrete advice to consider before your hands grow to the size of large cities.
Replacing Things Lost
A diagnosis of breast cancer is mind-blowing. A mastectomy can be devastating. But for some women, reconstructive surgery offers a chance for a silver lining.
Mindfuck Movies
Some movies inform. Some movies entertain. And some pry open your skull and punch you in the brain.
Mr. Bowyer’s Fantastic Machine
Lots of machines can manufacture things. What about one that could produce everything, including itself? Visiting the man who taught a machine to replicate.
Plan B
Determining that precise instant when life starts is a big subject in American politics, but it’s rarely discussed with much nuance.
Re: Cephalopod
Now that Congress has approved domestic wire-tapping, no one can prevent the U.S. from becoming a surveillance state. No one, that is, except for cathym17@zipmail.com.
The Superbug
In 2007 news headlines pointed many directions, but rarely long enough at the plague that's creeping up our doorstep. Here's the year of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus asureus--aka, the superbug.
You Sexy Atheist, You
Who says non-believers can’t get frisky like the faithful? Secular countries may be suffering declining populations, but atheists still have all the fun.
The Future of Organized Labor
From economists to politicians, pundits the nation over argue organized labor is fast becoming extinct. If unions survive, it's safe to assume not much will change when it comes to ground-level operations. People, after all, will be people. And robots will be robots.
Changed Equations That Changed the World
As it turns out, the rules of science are more flexible than you'd think. When you tinker with the mechanics of the universe, however, you'd better be prepared for drastic repercussions.
Brian Greene
Living in three dimensions can be hard enough, but 10? More than 10? Our man in Boston engages physicist and author Brian Greene in a fascinating conversation about string theory, science writing, and the type of nightmares that haunt contemporary physicists.
New York Inventions
Life in Gotham becomes so insular occasionally, we wonder why scientists aren't working on special inventions to make our lives easier. Luckily, the TMN engineers are on the case.
What Are You, Drunk?
A new study on binge drinking from the Harvard School of Public Health slides off the stool, falls down, and admits that it really didn't know what it was talking about earlier, with all that "research" business.
Happy Birthday, Embryo
For good or ill, the first genetic engineering of a human embryo is one more mental adjustment in a year of Herculean mental adjustments. And 2001 started off so boring.