Business, Science, & Tech
How Fortnite Captured Teens’ Hearts and Minds
The craze for the third-person shooter game has elements of Beatlemania, the opioid crisis, and eating Tide Pods.
- Letter from California
A Vintner’s Quest to Create a Truly American Wine
Randall Grahm’s iconoclastic obsession will involve breeding new varietals from scratch and growing them where grapes have never been grown before.
- Lab Notes
Why Nouns Slow Us Down
A new study found that they actually take longer to spit out than verbs do, presumably because they require more thought to produce.
The Latest
Deep in the Honduran Rain Forest, an Ecological SWAT Team Explores a Lost World
Centuries ago, the City of the Monkey God was home to a mysterious civilization. Since then, the region has been overrun by jaguars, snakes, and other jungle creatures.
At Last, Scientific Proof That Eurovision Makes People Happier
“Even an abysmal performance would be better than complete absence from the contest,” a group of British researchers concluded.
Free Will, Video Games, and the Profoundest Quantum Mystery
How an international team of experimental physicists used the unpredictability of the human brain to probe the nature of reality.
Fleeing the Lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano
“You don’t think about it until it comes,” one evacuee said. “It just goes to show you nothing is permanent in this world.”
Spotlight
Is Capitalism a Threat to Democracy?
The idea that authoritarianism attracts workers harmed by the free market, which emerged when the Nazis were in power, has been making a comeback.
The Digital Vigilantes Who Hack Back
American companies that fall victim to data breaches want to retaliate against the culprits. But can they do so without breaking the law?
The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul
Teens have taken a technology that was supposed to help grownups stop smoking and invented a new kind of bad habit, molded in their own image.
How Frightened Should We Be of A.I.?
Thinking about artificial intelligence can help clarify what makes us human—for better and for worse.
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- 1.Annals of Appearances
The Profound Presence of Doria Ragland
- 2.The Political Scene
Will the Fervor to Impeach Donald Trump Start a Democratic Civil War?
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The Diplomat Who Quit the Trump Administration
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