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Is Ultraprocessed Food Really That Bad?
A Harvard professor challenges conventional wisdom.
Liquid Computing
Imagine a computer, suspended in a flask of liquid, which assembles itself when the liquid is poured onto a desktop. Sound like science fiction?...
Purse Strings of the Heart
Odysseus struggled to resist the Sirens. Adam Smith warned of dangerous passions for profusion. And we have all, despite our diets, succumbed to...
The Early Days of the H-bomb
If we build it, we lay the groundwork for acts of mass destruction and violence toward mankind. But if we don't build it, we leave ourselves...
"Hypochondria of the Heart"
In 1688 a Swiss doctor, Johannes Hofer, identified a new medical syndrome, nostalgia: "the sad mood originating from the desire for return...
Shakespeare's "Tenth Muse"?
Illustration by Bartek Malysa Perhaps the second-most-cultivated plant in Elizabethan England, after wheat, was hemp--Cannabis sativa...
Exploding Evolution
Evolution will occur wherever organisms display variation, differences in fitness, and the capacity for inheritance. Humans have always sped up...
Locking Down Crime?
If a nation's crime rate is any measure of its gentility, the United States is getting downright civilized. From 1990 to 1999, crime--which for...
Snap Judgments Work!
An attentive glance, an affirming nod, a warm smile--these may sound like the makings of a love sonnet...
Prosperity and the Pill
Hailed as a medical miracle, the birth-control pill has been lauded and vilified for its virtually fail-safe powers as an oral contraceptive...
The Brain at Midlife
Researcher Francine Benes has penetrated a "blind spot" in neuroscience. Photograph by Tracy Powell Those of you...