Being a Supreme Court justice is a pretty sweet gig. The Court typically hears about 60 cases a year, plus a smattering of “shadow docket” cases that receive expedited review. Like schoolchildren, the justices take their summers off — typically wrapping up their pending cases in June and then skipping town in early July. And […]

Over the last few decades, wildfires, farmers, and cattle ranchers have razed millions of acres of tropical forests across the planet. Much of that deforestation has occurred in three countries: Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Indonesia. But in the last few years, another, smaller nation has risen in the ranks of nations with […]

Sentience is hot these days. Partly because of the development of impressive new AI systems, everyone seems to be asking: How do we know if something is sentient?  While consciousness means simply having a subjective point of view on the world — a feeling of what it’s like to be you — sentience is the […]

I have been a bridesmaid six times. I’ve traveled across the country and outside of it to see my friends get married. I’ve planned bachelorette parties in New Orleans and gone to bridal showers in Arizona. I love love. It’s a beautiful thing to witness. But it adds up: the dresses, the flights, the gift.  […]

In a lab room, a toddler, deaf from birth, sits while a tone plays. There’s no reaction. His face does not change.  Six weeks later, after a single injection of an experimental gene therapy, the same toddler is back in the same room. The tone plays. The toddler’s head turns toward the sound. And somewhere […]