How Wordle brought us back together
Spelling Bee, too, and Words With Friends. Who knew online word games would get us talking to each other again?
By Schuyler Velasco

Why are we seeing all these UFOs?
By Glenn McDonald

Go to a concert with your friends — without actually being there
By Jim Sullivan

Why Africa needs a ‘Google Translate for science’
By Sibusiso Biyela

Think opera peaked 200 years ago? These artists want to change your mind.
By Schuyler Velasco

Youth sports is losing referees. This training app could help.
By Matt Crossman

Culture
What’s in that petri dish? Your next burger.
By Kara Baskin

How magic survived the pandemic
By Glenn McDonald

Sparkles, poo, and crying eyes: This website interprets emoji
By Tony Rehagen

Why Shakespeare and Melville are so good at Twitter
By Margaret Eby

Cats helped build the internet. Now, the web is giving back.
By Eoin O'Carroll

Riding the big wave with an inflatable safety vest
By Kade Krichko

Humans + Robots
Go ahead, accept the cookies
By Eoin O’Carroll
Put down the joystick. Just use your brainwaves.
By Hannah Thomasy

What can tiny living robots do for you?
By Stav Dimitropoulos

He spent months underwater. Now he wants to save the ocean.
By Erick Trickey

How was the workout? Let me ask my smart socks.
By Matt Crossman
I failed to trick the adbots. Here’s what I learned.
By Glenn McDonald

Space
Bugs, anyone? How to feed a Mars colony
Tackling the food supply in space might give us some ideas for Earth
By Schuyler Velasco

The universe is expanding faster than we expected. These astronomers want to know why.
By Matt Crossman

How do you make a human heart? Maybe in zero gravity.
By Tony Rehagen

Try a quiz
Your brain vs. artificial intelligence
To understand how AI works, you have to understand human cognition, and recognize the processes we take for granted.

Can you tell the difference between modern and medieval health myths? Take this quiz.
By Schuyler Velasco

Is your dating app spying on you? Take this quiz.
By Schuyler Velasco and Ceci Menchetti


What would you do? Take an immigrant’s journey.
Here are eight immigrant stories, told through composite characters but based on real laws and historically documented scenarios. Follow their paths, and see how you would respond to the choices they faced.