The Takeaway

What the Heck Is a Human Being Anyway?

Cancer Researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee and ASU President Michael Crow on the Questions Posed by Cutting-Edge Genetics

Near the end of a wide-ranging conversation about the complexity of the human genome and the history and future of genetics, Arizona State University President Michael Crow noted the almost inconceivably large number—“10 to the 14th” power—of microorganisms in our bodies. And then he turned to cancer researcher Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, and posed what Crow called “a complicated question.”

“What the hell are we?”

Crow and Mukherjee, author of the new book The Gene: An Intimate History and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, already had …

By Joe Mathews |

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Your Kid’s College Degree Might Be Worthless

Author Jeff Selingo Says Students Aren’t Getting the Skills They Need for Today’s Economy

By Sarah Rothbard |

For decades, a college degree “was a signal that people were ready for the workforce,” a sign to parents that their children “were going to be golden in the job …

If We Want to Fix Health Care, It’s Now or Never

Baby Boomers Haven’t Busted America’s System yet—but We Need to Figure out How to Pay Less for Better Patient Outcomes

By Paul Bisceglio |

Are the baby boomers going to bust the health care system?

That’s the big question Wall Street Journal reporter Anna Wilde Mathews posed in her opening remarks to a Zócalo/Health Futures …


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