How Scientists Can Be Good Citizens
We have a responsibility to ensure that our discoveries are used in the public interest. That isn’t always easy.
Donald Trump’s Cruel and Unusual Innovations
Deporting illegal immigrants is lawful. Imprisoning them in El Salvador makes a mockery of the Eighth Amendment.
We’ve Been Thinking About Love All Wrong
What illness taught me about true friendship
The Writer Who Understood Aloneness
Mavis Gallant’s short stories are about people, especially women, who prefer to live on the social margins. I cherish one of them most of all.
A White House Briefing Straight From North Korea
How MAGA influencers have reshaped the press corps
A Defense Against Gaslighting Sociopaths
If you can recognize their signature move, then forewarned is forearmed.
Is Anthony Weiner Ready to Go Another Round?
The ex-congressman whose name became a punch line is running for New York’s city council. In some ways, he hasn’t changed a bit.
The Dark Ages Are Back
Americans must insist on academic freedom, or risk losing what makes our nation great.
The Texas County Where ‘Everybody Has Somebody in Their Family’ With Dementia
And many people with the condition are cared for at home.
I Should Have Seen This Coming
When I joined the conservative movement in the 1980s, there were two types of people: those who cared earnestly about ideas, and those who wanted only to shock the left. The reactionary fringe has won.
Universities Deserve Special Standing
A good life and a good society require an ongoing search for understanding and knowledge.
Skin a Rabbit
A short story
American Panopticon
The Trump administration is pooling data on Americans. Experts fear what comes next.
A Witch Hunt at the State Department
Trump’s commissars are looking for ideological enemies.
The Missing Part of Trump’s Minerals Math
Without demand from clean energy, the U.S. market for rare earth, graphite, and lithium will falter.
How the U.S. Lost the Canadian Election
Trump’s threats to annex Canada reversed its political trend—but they should not reverse its commitment to free trade.
Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber
A series of purposely brutalizing psychological experiments may have confirmed Theodore Kaczynski’s still-forming belief in the evil of science while he was in college.
Inside Mike Waltz’s White House Exit
Signalgate was the national security adviser’s most glaring mistake. But his problems ran deeper.
A Sea Story
One of the worst maritime disasters in European history took place two decades ago. It remains very much in the public eye. On a stormy night on the Baltic Sea, more than 850 people lost their lives when a luxurious ferry sank below the waves. From a mass of material, including official and unofficial reports and survivor testimony, our correspondent has distilled an account of the Estonia’s last moments—part of his continuing coverage for the magazine of anarchy on the high seas.
Michel Houellebecq Has Some Fresh Predictions. Be Afraid.
In a new novel, France’s famously abrasive author progresses from barbed satire to a spiritual-conversion narrative.