Our Editors’ Favorite Stories of 2020
...2020 Nothing appealed more perfectly to the Romantic sensibility than the mix of horror and awe evoked by a volcano erupting. Puffins Seen Using Tools, Breaking Dumb-Puffin Stereotypes Liz Tracey...
Stories That Got Lost in 2020’s Erratic News Cycle
...after All Jess Romeo September 25, 2020 If we find aliens, chances are they'll be nothing like we ever imagined. Upside-Down Jellyfish and the Mucus of Death Liz Tracey March...
Voting in American Politics: A Syllabus
...message out. The Voting Rights Act 1965: Annotated Liz Tracey August 26, 2022 The passing of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965 prohibited the use of Jim Crow laws...
A Science Reader for COVID-19
What pandemics often do, in addition to causing debilitating illness and profound loss, is expose: the gaps in our scientific knowledge, the limitations on our abilities to respond, and the...
15 Black Women Who Should Be (More) Famous
...rights protest that led to desegregating public transportation in NYC. The “Doctress” Was In: Rebecca Lee Crumpler Liz Tracey March 9, 2020 The first Black woman physician served communities in...
Cytokine Storms: The Cruel Irony of an Immune Response
In John M. Barry’s book on the 1918 flu pandemic, The Great Influenza, one of the most striking passages concerns what actually killed many of the young, healthy victims of...
Preprints, Science, and the News Cycle
In 1991, a preprint server went online at Los Alamos Laboratory, famous home of the Manhattan Project. ArXiv was an electronic repository where physicists could share papers with their colleagues...
What’s Behind the Very Real Butch Quarantine Hair Crisis?
A specter is haunting the mirrors of the world—the specter of rapidly growing hair. With COVID-19 closing barber shops and salons, the short-haired people of the world have been brought...
Viral Mutation for the Perplexed
Imagine a game of Telephone, where a phrase or sentence or short story is passed, one person to another, until the last person is reached. They then say what they’ve...
Teaching Pandemics Syllabus
...disproportionately deadly among people of color. Long-term environmental racism could be a major factor in this disparity. What’s Behind the Very Real Butch Quarantine Hair Crisis? Liz Tracey April 25,...