If, like me, you’re a parent of a young child, there’s one thing you’ve come to fear above all else. (And no, it’s not “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters played for the 10,000th time, though that’s a close second.)  It’s the humble peanut. Even if your child isn’t allergic to the nuts, past surveys have […]

AI is improving at what feels like a breakneck pace. Once, it struggled with basic syntax; now, it can ace some college-level coursework. The better it gets, the more reason there is to worry about what it could soon mean for all of our jobs — and whether continued progress could doom many to a […]

Climate stories usually start the same way: fire, flood, loss, collapse. The charts are grim. The vibes are worse. But there’s another story in the numbers that starts with what’s working, what’s already being built, and how far we’ve actually come. Hannah Ritchie is a data scientist at the University of Oxford and the author […]

Animal rights advocates often contrast humanity’s dismal treatment of animals farmed for food with our adoration bordering on worship of pet cats and dogs — the point being that these distinctions between animals that are equally sentient are arbitrary, hypocritical, and pointlessly cruel.  The comparison makes an important point, but it also conceals a grimmer […]

For years, obesity rates in the US have gone in one direction: up. From the first year it was launched, Gallup’s National Health and Well-Being Index has found that the share of US adults reporting obesity has climbed and climbed, rising from 25.5 percent in 2008 to 39.9 percent in 2022. That survey caught the […]