Next Reads
In this excerpt from “Lucky By Design,” Judd Kessler explains how opportunity costs shape our choices and why time is the real price we pay.
A preview of the latest novel by the Hugo- and Nebula-winning author.
In this excerpt from “The Art of Spending Money,” Morgan Housel lays out the spending and financial habits guaranteed to end in regret.
In this excerpt from “Governing Babel,” John Wihbey explores how AI is reshaping online moderation by offering tools that can help human moderators, but also raises the risk of disinformation and digital chaos.
In this excerpt from “The Formula for Better Health,” Tom Frieden explores how Alice Hamilton transformed public health in her fight against lead poisoning.
In this excerpt from “Seven Rivers,” historian Vanessa Taylor explores how Ancient Egyptian pharaohs harnessed the Nile River to build empires and secure their power.
In this excerpt from “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…,” Steven Pinker examines how crying may have evolved as part of a suite of emotional expressions aimed at strengthening social bonds.
In this excerpt from “Facing Infinity,” Jonas Enander examines how John Michell conceived of “dark stars,” or massive bodies with enough gravity to trap light, all the way back in 1783.
In this excerpt from “The Story of CO2,” Peter Brennan explains how changes in the Earth’s ecosystem led to fire, which in turn led our ancestors to become the “fire apes.”
In this excerpt from “Tales of Militant Chemistry,” Alice Lovejoy exposes how the need for uranium during WWII led the Allied governments to turn a blind eye to colonial exploitation.
In “The Headache,” Tom Zeller Jr. explores one of the human brain’s most enduring, and painful, enigmas.
Before becoming America’s most infamous assassin, John Wilkes Booth was a magnetic actor who was beloved by audiences and courted by critics.
In “After the Spike,” Dean Spears and Michael Geruso show why policy, rather than high population density, has the most significant impact on the environment.
In “Human History on Drugs,” Sam Kelly explores what the research can tell us about one of history’s most brilliant — and troubled — artists.
Most of us think we’re good listeners, but we’re wrong — and it’s ruining our relationships.
In this excerpt from “Agents of Change,” Christina Hillsberg tells the story of Martha “Marti” Peterson, the first female case officer stationed in Soviet Moscow.
In “The Gift of Not Belonging,” Rami Kaminski explains why group consensus may hinder the original thinkers who help advance society.
In “The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs,” Riley Black reveals the bold mammals that thrived in the Age of Reptiles.
In “Raising AI,” De Kai argues that today’s AIs are already more like us than we think they are.
English could settle into a state of “diglossia” where a gulf exists between the written form and its spoken varieties, but the two are bound into a single tongue.
From medieval myths to Shakespeare’s plays and modern cinema, British culture kept the Roman Empire alive long after its fall.
Nurture your passions instead.
In this preview from “The Saucerian,” author Gabriel Mckee explains how the combination of fantastical stories and obscure bureaucracy launched the “space age of the imagination.”
If an asteroid hadn’t killed off the dinosaurs, humans would almost certainly have never walked the Earth.
“Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, like books written in a truly foreign language.”
The first in a series of short stories by the Hugo- and Nebula-winning author that inspired the cult hit “Pantheon.”
In his book, “Birds, Sex and Beauty,” Matt Ridley explores why learning isn’t always nature versus nurture.
“Personality isn’t based on what we say we’ll do. It’s rooted in what we actually do, which becomes what we think about.”
Cognitive neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explores the differences, and similarities, of how AI and humans make meaning of the world.
When plans fall apart, adaptability can build something better.