Batteries Not Excluded The supercomputer in your pocket and your next car rely on them–so what will we do if we run out of lithium?

    Where We Live and How We Die What a year of death looks like around the world.

    Beats: Food Food structures our day, and food systems shape our world

    To Board a Cruise Ship–and Never Get Off Meet the retirees who never stop moving.

    Let Robots Handle Your Emotional Burnout at Work But as robotics and computing evolve, some researchers foresee a future where technology can relieve the long-held emotional burden of some of these professions. They think we owe it to the service workforce to offer a new frontline of robotic protection. In fact, they think it’s far overdue–but does that actually mean just automating these jobs away?

    Your Classroom Is Making You Fail Almost everyt traditional classroom design makes it harder to learn–yet the fixes are often simple.

    Fowl Plague

    Pandemics have threatened humanity in the past–and avian influenza may well be the next one due.
    Duncan Geere
    Aug 4, 2017

    The Human Machine

    A series about the increasingly blurred lines between us and our machines.
    Ian Steadman
    Aug 23, 2017

    Isla del Encanto

    Puerto Ricans have always found opportunity in the limits placed upon them. Exploring the island’s agricultural future–from community gardens to research hubs, bakers to growers to distillers.
    Alicia Kennedy
    Apr 16, 2019

    Beats: Space

    Space is where we project our dreams–and our nightmares–of the future.

    Beats: Food

    Food structures our day, and food systems shape our world

    Beats: Disability

    “Disable” is an active verb, and disability describes the social and environmental barriers that prevent access just as much as an individual body’s physical reality.

    Beats: Health

    Access to health care is as much a matter of public policy as it is the size of a person’s pocketbook; within a doctor’s office, many factors affect the quality of treatment.

    The Boundaries of Artificial Emotional Intelligence

    If our virtual assistants and emotional laborers are all turning out to be soothing, female-voiced AI, will it close certain gaps for human women? Or will it ratify them?
    Leigh Alexander
    Mar 31, 2017 8 min read

    The World’s Best Sports Technology Comes From the Military-Industrial Complex

    Sports have had a long relationship with the military–but over the past decade or so at least one aspect of that connection has deepened, and technological innovations developed for military purposes are making their way into sports of all kinds.
    Richard Moss
    Jul 11, 2016 6 min read

    How to Smuggle Money into North Korea

    “It takes 20 minutes to get cash into the hands of a North Korean,” said Jieun Baek, a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Author of the forthcoming book North Korea’s Hidden Revolution, she estimates that somewhere between $12 to $20 million is transferred into the country annually from defectors […]
    Oliver Hotham
    Mar 23, 2016 5 min read