Archives: The Atlantic
How 4-Year-Olds Learn Particle Physics
Some say apps that make learning fun are key, but what’s lost when all that learning is spent looking at a screen?
Beautiful Waves of Giant Booty-Shaking Bees
Thousands of twerking insects move in unison to ward off predators and cool their colonies.
The War on Stupid People
American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth.
Cancer: The Final Frontier
Landmark breakthroughs in cancer treatment and a policy structure where those advances can flourish have given fuel to the ambitious “Moonshot” to cure the disease. But is it really possible?
Thirteen Anonymous Genetic Superheroes Walk Among Us
These people, unbeknownst to them, carry genes that all but guarantee that they’ll get fatal diseases. And yet, somehow, they’re completely healthy. They might carry other genes that mitigate their risk. Or perhaps, some aspect of their diet, lifestyle, or environment shields them from their harmful inheritance.
The Math Revolution
You wouldn’t see it in most classrooms, you wouldn’t know it by looking at slumping national test-score averages, but a cadre of American teenagers are reaching world-class heights in math—more of them, more regularly, than ever before. The students are being produced by a new pedagogical ecosystem—almost entirely extracurricular—that has developed online and in the country’s rich coastal cities and tech meccas.
The Food Gap Is Widening
Wealthy people are eating better than ever, while the poor are eating worse.
All Stories Are the Same
From Avatar to The Wizard of Oz, Aristotle to Shakespeare, there’s one clear form that dramatic storytelling has followed since its inception.
Nature Has Lost Its Meaning
To solve climate change, we need to reimagine our entire relationship to the nonhuman world.