Culture | Science Practice
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Chapter one
Unity
Biology | Microbiology
The Vast Viral World: What We Know (and Don’t Know)
Exploring the minuscule and mysterious world of viruses.
Biology | Health
How to Conquer COVID-19 Amid a Confederacy of Dunces
Science can’t be democratic, says an outspoken virologist.
Chapter two
Elementary
Culture | Psychology
The Weak Case for Grit
Where’s the evidence that grit predicts success?
Matter | Chemistry
Carbon, It’s Elementary, Dear Reader
A selection of illustrations from the new book Carbon, One Atom’s Odyssey.
Biology | Animals
How “My Octopus Teacher” Defied Convention
Craig Foster reflects on a relationship that changed his connection to the natural world.
Chapter three
Destiny
Matter | Earth Science
The Mother of All Accidents
Odds are, if an asteroid hadn’t crashed into Earth, we wouldn’t be here.
Culture | History
The Botanist Who Defied Stalin
His dream of feeding the world died in prison. His dream of a seed bank lives on.
Matter | Aliens
A Wrinkle in Nature Could Lead to Alien Life
There may be more than one way to tune a universe for life.
Chapter four
Harmony
Culture | Music
What Makes Music Universal
Music brings us together to show us how different we are.
Culture | Philosophy
Our Most Effective Weapon Is Imagination
Why science changes everything.
Biology | Environment
How Surprising Connections Can Save the Ocean
Marine biologist Heather Koldewey on conservation, seahorses, and cross-discipline work.
Chapter five
Anatomy
Biology | Education
You Can’t Dissect a Virtual Cadaver
What is lost when we lose in-person learning.
Biology | Animals
The Largest Cells on Earth
Deep in the ocean abyss, xenophyophores are worlds unto themselves.
Biology | Psychology
Why People Feel Like Victims
Getting to the core of today’s social acrimony.
Related Facts So Romantic
“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.” —Jules Verne
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Ideas
How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.The universe bets on disorder. Imagine, for example, dropping a thimbleful of red dye into a swimming pool. All of those…
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Biology
Why We Love to Be Grossed Out
Nina Strohminger, perhaps not unlike many fans of raunchy comedies and horror flicks, is drawn to disgust. The University of Pennsylvania psychologist has written extensively on the feeling…
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Ideas
Do We Have Free Will? Maybe It Doesn't Matter
Belief is a special kind of human power. Agustin Fuentes, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, eloquently claims as much in his recent book Why We Believe: Evolution and the…
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Numbers
Why AI Lags Behind the Human Brain in Computational Power
Recent advances have made deep neural networks the leading paradigm of artificial intelligence. One of the great things about deep neural networks is that, given a large number of examples,…
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