CATEGORIES

The Silver Bridge Was a Marvel of Engineering - THEN IT CAME CRASHING DOWN.

How a risky design, cost-cutting, and strange supernatural warnings changed a small town forever

The Perfect Whiskey-toWater Ratio

NEAT OR ON THE ROCKS? OR MAYBE just a touch of water? It's a question long debated by whiskey lovers and one largely left to personal preference until now.

A. I. Goes to War

Ships without crews. Autonomous drone swarms. A small U.S. Navy task force is using off-the-shelf robotics and Artificial Intelligence to prepare for the next great conflict at sea

The Fractal Immortality of Grimes

I thought my interview with Grimes-the mysterious techno artist, fan of all nerddom, and the deepest of insiders in Elon Musk's world-would be one-on-one. Instead it wound up as a roundtable discussion. Turns out there are multiple personas embedded in the surprisingly haimish human who sat under a tree with me and spent the waning hours of an afternoon in conversation. There was Claire Boucher, the given name of a Vancouver kid obsessed with video games and devoted to provoking adults with misbehavior and the embrace of taboo subjects. There was Grimes, the self-invented, scrappy DIY musician and provocateur who weaves sci-fi into her work and released what Pitchfork judged to be the second-best song of the 2010s. And there was her preferred nomenclature, "c," invoking the speed of light

THE DEFECTOR

Doug Rushkoff was one of tech's founding optimists. Now he's renouncing the digital revolution. He says it's the only human option.

THE GREAT DIVIDE

There are two ways to compute, and two ways to see the world. It's batch vs. loopand we really need them to reconcile

SAFETY FIRST

Fears that artificial intelligence might wipe us out have fueled the rise of protest groups like Pause Al. Their warnings are far-fetched, but not that far-fetched

FRAUD TRACKER

With her blog Web3 Is Going Just Great, software engineer Molly White rains on the crypto parade. She doesn't feel great about it

MIND WIDE OPEN

Kids soak up new skills, adults not so much. But neuroscientist Gül Dölen might have found a way to help grownups learn like littles and heal from stroke and trauma. Step one: Take psychedelics.

BRING THE NOISE

A vast array of gadgets make it easy to blot out sonic intrusions-maybe a little too easy

Watch This Space

French satellite giant Eutelsat is taking on Elon Musk's Starlink-while navigating Russia's war in Ukraine, Brexit politics, and Iranian jamming attacks

THE WITCHY AMBITION OF SIMA SISTANI

WeightWatchers' CEO was tasked with helping her company catch up in the digital age. Now she's scrambling to keep it relevant in the Ozempic age

THE GENERATIVE HUSTLE OF SATYA NADELLA

Microsoft's leader is betting everything on a future drenched in Al-even if it's the last thing invented by humankind

CROWDED HOUSE

Startups are buying properties and wooing first-time real estate investors to purchase shares. The scheme could spell trouble for both renters and aspiring homeowners

THE APOCALYPTIC OPTIMISM OF CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

The director says his new biopic, Oppenheimer, might just terrify you. At the very least, it'll force you to ask questions about history, fear, technology-all of it

SONIC BOOM

With hundreds of thousands of podcasts competing for listeners, hosts are using IRL events and other strategies to make their shows more of an \"experience.\" Fans dig it

THE UNPARALLELED SQUARENESS OF PETE BUTTIGIEG

Sure, the US secretary of transportation has thoughts on building bridges. But infrastructure occupies just a sliver of his voluminous mind

THE THREE MOUNDS AT RED CLOUD

How much truth and healing can forensic technology really bring? On the sites of Native American boarding schools, Marsha Small has made it her life's mission to find out

THE CASE FOR SOFTWARE CRITICISM

Software may be the defining cultural artifact of our age. It's time to build a culture of critical analysis around it

The Ways to Travel the Multiverse

For nearly 100 years, physicists have been trying to reconcile the physics of the smallest building blocks of the universe (quantum physics) with the physics of the galactically large (Einstein's theory of general relativity)

Can AI Really Teach a Novice Wood-worker How to Complete Their First Project?

What began as a "simple" thought experiment quickly morphed into a complicated and potentially dangerous hands-on experience in the real world of woodworking

A Living History of the Humble Paper Airplane

For centuries, paper airplanes have unlocked the science of flight—now they could inspire drone designs

How Ukraine's "Secret Weapon" Shrugs Off Russian Radio Interference

SINCE THE START OF ITS WAR WITH Ukraine, Russia claims to have taken out 90 percent of Kyiv's drones with radio jamming

There Has Never Been a Better Time to Buy a SMART GRILL

THE CHOICE USED TO BE BETWEEN CHARCOAL AND PROPANE flavor or easy

Our Model of Human Color Perception Being Wrong

ON A FLIGHT FROM NEW YORK CITY TO Berlin, the route map might look a little curious: The shortest path between these two cities is surely a straight line, and yet the flight path curves distinctly

The Pentagon's Hypersonic Rocket Engine

HYPERSONIC ENGINES COME IN ALL shapes and sizes-some are even 3Dprinted

Brava's Glass Smart Oven Cooks at the Speed of Light

SMART OVENS USE A MIX OF SENSORS AND SOFTS ware to cook food to your liking

IN THE WAR AGAINST THE SPOTTED LANTERNFLY, TWO TINY WASPS COULD BE THE SECRET WEAPON

The insect flutters her antennae to taste the egg mass beneath her, movements stuttering like stop-motion animation

Leroy Hood Wants to Show You How to LIVE FOR A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME

With a big data approach and a focus on disease prevention, the renowned biologist is on a quest to start a healthcare revolution

If We Can Eradicate Zombie Cells

AS WE AGE, OUR BODIES FILL UP WITH a type of dysfunctional cell that permanently stops dividing, called a \"senescent cell.\"