Homo Gluttonous

Humans have evolved with little resistance to abundant, easy food. Will we gorge ourselves and our planet to death?

Can Chess be Bad for your Health?

One author found out.

Life is Tough

Human life is fragile but tardigrades and other extremophiles show that life itself is in little danger of disappearing.

The First Global City

High in the Andes, Potosí supplied the world with silver, and in return reaped goods and peoples from Burma to Baghdad.

This Tiny Traveling Bookstore Wanders the French Countryside

Its creator—and resident—brings literature to small towns whose booksellers have shuttered.

Chasing Alexander Supertramp

Every year, fans of “Into the Wild” risk their lives to reach the bus where Christopher McCandless died.

The Martha Stewarting of Powerful Women

How society disproportionately demonizes women after they’ve bent the same rules that men have always broken.

The Unexpected Magic of Mushrooms

Normally associated with rot and decay, fungi may be a great overlooked resource that could help humanity deal with some of its greatest problems.

The ABC of Time

In our Universe, time seems to go from past to future, not in reverse. But what if time doesn’t even have a direction?

The Pursuit of Happiness

Why Epicurean ideas suit the challenges of modern secular life.

The Problem of Mindfulness

Mindfulness promotes itself as value-neutral but it is loaded with (troubling) assumptions about the self and the cosmos

The Brain-Eating Amoeba Is a Nearly Perfect Killer

The single-celled menace rarely infects humans. That’s what makes it so hard to treat.

Reading Lessons

You never stop learning how to read — probably because you also never stop forgetting how to read.