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Donald Trump Could Make the Media Great Again

Newsrooms May Be Guilty of Fueling His Rise, but Journalists Can Redeem Themselves by Holding the Mogul Accountable

A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof weighed in on who is to blame for the poisoning of American politics.

“The G.O.P. Created Donald Trump,” blared the headline. In recent decades, Kristof wrote, Republican leaders “pried open a Pandora’s box, a toxic politics of fear and resentment, sometimes brewed with a tinge of racial animus, and they could never satisfy the unrealistic expectations that they nurtured among supporters.”

True enough, but incomplete. The lies and predations of the power elite have given voters ample reason to be angry. Almost …

By Dan Gillmor |

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Albert Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and Me

Why Astrophysicists Were So Desperate to Catch a 'Whopping Big Signal' from the Universe

By Elizabeth Garbee |

Like nearly every other physicist in the world last week, I was glued to my computer screen watching the recent press conference jointly called by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory …

The New Industrial Revolution Could Use a Lesson in Empathy

If You Leave Technology to the Technologists, Innovation Will Only End Up Creating More Problems

By Andrew Maynard |

It’s hard to miss the drumbeat: Self-driving cars are coming. Self-driving cars are coming.

You may have heard about self-driving cars when Google was first on the road with a …

Why I Dig Aztec Kitchen Trash

While Most Archaeologists Hunt for Pyramids and Palaces, I’m Fascinated by the Detritus of Ordinary Life

By Michael E. Smith |

For years I was too embarrassed to admit how I first got interested in the Aztecs and Mayas. Now, as an archaeologist who has directed excavations at Aztec sites for …

For Refugees in America, Even the Light Switches Can Be Bewildering

Getting into the U.S. Is Hard. Adapting to Life Here Is Harder Still.

By Barbara Klimek and David Androff |

In the aftermath of the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, politicians in the U.S. have voiced skepticism about the arrival of foreigners on their shores—and even question the …

Want to Donate Your Body to Science? Call Me

For Three Years, I Had to Ask Next-of-Kin Uncomfortable Questions About the Deceased

By Whitney M. Woodworth |

For over three years, I thought about death every day. This wasn’t some morbid obsession. It was my job.

A growing number of senior citizens—both permanent residents and part-time “snowbirds”—have …


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