Humans are a coastal species. More than one in ten people in the world live within three miles of the shore, and about 40 percent of us live within an hour’s drive of the ocean. These shoreline regions generate a massive force in the global economy — in the US alone, coastal counties account for […]

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. The primary elections in Texas yesterday weren’t just incremental partisan events; they were preliminary, real-world tests of several critical dynamics that will also influence the general election. On the Democratic side, a battle between […]

Driverless cars have the potential to substantially reduce the death toll from likely the most dangerous everyday activity in American life: driving. So it might surprise you to know that the very people who are working to make transportation safer, more pleasant, and more humane are actually pretty divided on them.  That is because if […]

Readers and audiences have been falling in love with British romance stories for centuries. Books by authors like the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen still fly off the shelves, and they’ve been adapted for the big and small screen dozens of times. Wuthering Heights alone has been adapted over 30 times, and director Emerald Fennell’s […]

America’s AI industry isn’t just divided by competing interests, but also by conflicting worldviews. In Silicon Valley, opinion about how artificial intelligence should be developed and used — and regulated — runs the gamut between two poles. At one end lie “accelerationists,” who believe that humanity should expand AI’s capabilities as quickly as possible, unencumbered […]