The Uninhabitable Earth
To read an annotated version of this article, complete with interviews with scientists and links to further reading, click here. I. ‘Doomsday’ Peering beyond scientific reticence. It is, I promise,…
Meet Rare Sea Wolves Who Live Off The Ocean And Can Swim For Hours
Along the wild Pacific coast of British Columbia, there lives a population of the sea wolves. “We know from exhaustive DNA studies that these wolves are genetically distinct from their…
The Wastebook
After a senator calls her research a waste of taxpayer dollars, biologist Sheila Patek heads to Capitol Hill to prove what her science is worth. In December 2015, the fight…
Collier’s articles on the conquest of space (1952-1954) – Space Stuff
From March 22, 1952, to April 30, 1954, Collier’s magazine published a series of articles that predicted some aspects of the future with uncanny accuracy. The articles came out in…
Born This Gay
At the turn of the 20th century, a German doctor sets out to prove that homosexuality is rooted in biology—but his research has consequences he never intended. In pre-Nazi Germany,…
Kurt Vonnegut and the Rainmakers
In the mid 1940s, no one would publish Kurt Vonnegut’s stories. But when he gets hired as a press writer at General Electric, the company’s fantastical science inspires some of…
Six Degrees
Finding the right six people to make a difference. What does it mean to be connected to every person on earth? {listen}
From beyond the grave
trying to hold onto someone after they are dead
The Inventor and The Thief / Snap Judgment, “Legacy”
This story is a pretty good example of how capitalism kills innovation and how the mob and capitalism work in very similar ways.
Allusionist 58: Eclipse
It's August 2007. Lauren Marks is a 27-year-old actor and a PhD student, spending the month directing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She's in a bar, standing onstage,…