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.