Historians like to blame drought, famine and invaders. But this can’t explain why the empires never came back.

We’ve invented microbes that can eat plastic, detect landmines, and extract rare metals. They’ve been swallowed by a black hole.

Alex Chalmers reviews Armies of Sand by Kenneth Pollack.

Not all NIMBYs are alike. Dividing the most unreasonable ones from the rest might be the key to getting homes built.

Rats have conquered nearly every place on earth where humans live. Only Alberta soldiers on.

Taste is subjective. But when it comes to architecture, there is a surprising level of agreement.

Works in Progress issue 25 is out today

What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

People are right to want less police intrusion in their lives

Who benefits when we ask transit to pursue social goals?

What if instead of editing a gene, or blocking the protein it produces, you could simply switch it off?

Diplomacy, reform, and a convenient stone

If it had a clear effect on children we would know by now.

Saloni's TED talk was published today.

What smog, deforestation, and child labor tell us about the future of animal suffering

Few people know how much medicine has progressed in their lifetimes. Fewer know how much faster it could be progressing.

Watch now | GLP-1 drugs have transformed the treatment of obesity and diabetes, and also help with heart disease, kidney disease and sleep apnea. But they are far from the only medicine with more than one use.

Modernity has meant fewer children in virtually every culture around the world. Holdouts like Orthodox Jews might have lessons for the rest of us.

Large swaths of America’s cities were originally underwater. We stopped half a century ago, but there is plenty more land left to take.

A synthetic cell made via chemistry, laser phase plate electron microscopy, the first base-edited human embryo, lab-grown eggs and sperm, and more.

Works in Progress Issue 24 is out today.

Childbirth may be the most painful thing a person can experience, but we have the technology to numb the pain.

In 1688, England swept away the encrusted vetocracy that had held back economic growth for centuries. Could we do the same today?

Vaccinating wild animals can protect human health, and spare animals from extinction and suffering.

A preview of everything to come in Issue 24

Why does nobody there talk about zoning?

Most flags used to be ugly. They were probably better that way.

Multiple myeloma is brutal. We may finally have a cure, but American regulatory inertia means that it was discovered abroad.

For three hundred years, Japan enjoyed enviable stability and peace. All it took was locking up its warlike samurai elite in the world’s least efficient city.

In the 1940s, scientists made a discovery now fundamental to biology: genes are encoded in DNA. The story involves bacteria, dead mice, and a kitchen cream separator.

How a grasshopper caused the 1873 panic, and why recessions are usually just bad luck.

Malaria is caused not by a virus or bacterium, but by a complex, shape-shifting parasite that has evolved alongside us for millennia. This has made vaccine development a brutal challenge.

In this diary, Samuel Hughes visits Washington, DC, the world’s imperial capital, and reflects on a national style hiding in plain sight.

Most ancient architectural traditions have withered, but one is enjoying a golden age: Hindu temple architecture.

The strange path to global monopoly

A disease that was once a death sentence is increasingly treatable

Episode 16 is about building data centers, school districts and redistribution

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