Disintegrating Head Of David On Pink Background

What’s the Deal with Crypto Art?

Thirty years after the invention of blockchain, an artist sold a JPG using that technology for nearly $70 million. Huh?
C. Buddy Creech

C. Buddy Creech: Your Vaccine Questions Answered

Vaccinologist C. Buddy Creech on getting vaccinated, racial disparities, and the lessons we’ve learned after a year of COVID-19.
President Joe Biden holds a semiconductor during his remarks before signing an Executive Order on the economy

Semiconductor Shortages End an Era of Globalization

Our security studies columnist on leanness, supply chains, and resilience in a post-pandemic world.
Plain illuminated partially covered by fog, soft lights

Shedding Light on the Cost of Light Pollution

Artificial light has a huge variety of harmful effects on ecosystems. Scientists are exploring ways to mitigate the damage.
Two nuns caring for newborn babies, 1967

Inside a Home for Unwed Mothers

Young, unmarried pregnant women sometimes gave birth in secret at maternity homes. A historian uncovered some of their stories.
From left to right: Arthur Davison, Marjorie Allen Sieffert, and Witter Bynner

Spectra: The Poetry Movement That Was All a Hoax

In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.
A dog sitting in the woods

Animal Navigation, Mystery Bacteria, and Lies

Well-researched stories from The New Yorker, Scientific American, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Clockwise: Kevin Young, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Alexander, Mary Jo Bang, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jack Gilbert

10 Contemporary Elegies

In these poems of lament, the speaker expresses grief and sorrow.
A mural in Paseo Boricua on Division Street in Chicago

Puerto Rican Domestic Workers and Citizenship in the 1940s

Recruited to work on the US mainland for long hours at less than the prevailing rate, women migrants fought for dignity and recognition.
Pontiac, an Ottawa Indian, confronts Colonel Henry Bouquet who authorised his officers to spread smallpox amongst native Americans by deliberately infecting blankets after peace talks in 1764

How Commonly Was Smallpox Used as a Biological Weapon?

Once introduced into the Americas, smallpox spread everywhere. Is it possible to know how often that was done intentionally to kill people?