The Present

Evidence shows that information is transmitted via “complex contagion.”

When “superstar” companies start to dominate their industries, consumers sometimes benefit.

A decade ago, scientists weren’t able to confidently connect any individual weather event to climate change, even though the warming trends were clear.

Is it true that half of disaster relief is motivated politically rather than by need?

People who buy iPhones are not, it seems, masters of their own devices.

After the German election, will the nation continue to “muddle through” successfully enough to lead Europe?

Everybody wins, everybody loses, or something in between.

The cause of the recent uptick in radiation is unknown, but speculation about another catastrophe at Chernobyl is hyperbolic.

It follows a well-worn playbook for North Korea.

His family has finally gotten closure after 50 years of uncertainty.

The EU is slowly realizing that it cannot count on the U.S. to meet its security needs. Has the time finally come for a European military?

American and French troops turned capturing Hitler’s chalet into a game.

Engineers borrowed the maple tree’s “helicopter” to design tiny, flying microchips, which perform various tasks while in whirling free fall.

How do you recover after an economic apocalypse? It is not what you know, but who you know.

Hindsight is 20/20, particularly when you have had 20 years to think about what happened.

Scientists are solving the problem of costly energy storage.

China’s dominance of the rare earth metal industry is part of its overall geopolitical strategy.

A black swan event is rare but disruptive — and might be predictable.

Deepfakes featuring your digital double could replace emails and zoom presentations.

Unreasonable burdens prevent people from thriving. Eliminate them.

Bitcoin is often derided as volatile, but a new report suggests there is a method to the madness.

Paradoxically, we lose wars because the world is peaceful and the U.S. is powerful.

The design could help restore motor function after stroke, enhance virtual gaming experiences.

Your emotional brain is being manipulated to shop more, but there are ways to resist.

To preserve biodiversity and ecosystems, protected areas should be connected into a gigantic World Park.

Birthrates are cyclical and have gone up and down throughout history.

The questions about which massive structures to build, and where, are actually very hard to answer. Infrastructure is always about the future: It takes years to construct, and lasts for years beyond that.

You don’t need to completely automate a job to fundamentally change it.

A program in Brazil both helped and harmed. What can we learn from it?

Preferring “bases not places,” the U.S. does not really resemble the empires of old.