The Mysteries Revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope (CNN)
by Ashley Strickland
The images sent to Earth by the new James Webb Space Telescope are incredible to look at. But what can scientists use them for? And what else may be revealed in the two decades of the instrument’s mission?

The Long Fight for Reproductive Justice (Vox)
by Fabiola Cineas
The idea of reproductive justice goes far beyond abortion rights, encompassing the right to bear and raise children in safety. It’s a fight Black women have been waging since before the United States was founded.

Redrawing Birds’ Family Tree (The New Yorker)
by Ben Crair
Genome sequencing promised a way to finally sort out confusing evolutionary relationships. In some areas of study, like the early history of birds, what’s really happening is much stranger.

What Covid is Now (The Atlantic)
by Katherine J. Wu
The latest Covid wave sweeping the country looks different from the ones that came before it. In fact, it looks less like a wave than a morass of mutating strains causing infections and reinfections with no end in sight.

Revisiting the Hunter-Gatherer Utopia (Public Books)
by Webb Keane
Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins upended many people’s ideas about human progress with his portrayal of fulfilled foragers as the “Original Affluent Society.” How does the essay look fifty years later?

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