editor's pick
Our AI future: What AI can and (probably) can’t do
AI has genuine potential both to liberate humans from toil, or to allow greed and bias to run wild.
Z: The least religious generation ever
In an analysis that reads like porn for secularists, Daniel Cox details the degrees to which Gen Z is markedly more secular than any previous generational cohort.
Why AI isn’t an oracle of truth
Reading Time: 5 minutes Big Tech companies eager to find the next big thing have latched onto AI chatbots—but they’re racing ahead of what the tech can actually do.
Our secular struggle with medically assisted dying
Reading Time: 14 minutes Suffering from chronic pain, a friend’s grandmother took her own life when I was 18. I was over when my friend and her mother heard the news. I will never forget the character of her mother’s grief. She was devastated to lose her own mother, yes. But she was even more devast
What fifty years of struggle can teach us, going forward
Reading Time: 9 minutes The year is 1973. In January, Richard Nixon is sworn in for his second term as president, the US officially withdraws from its conflict in Vietnam, and an investigation into the Watergate break-ins expands from the burglars to the statesmen. In the coming months, Nixon will o
Slowing to listen at the end of life
Marcia sat up on the side of the bed, a hand on each knee, and braced herself as she leaned forward to open the space in her chest for more air. At 52, she was dying of ovarian cancer that had spread to her liver. The critical organ had failed,
Perfect empathy: Deep Space Nine and the most fantastical concept in all of fiction
Reading Time: 5 minutes A series that brought the optimism of Star Trek to the threshold of the 21st century ended with the message that empathy is the solution to all conflict. A generation later, that concept is much harder to accept.
Did Krakatoa’s eruption turn Indonesia Muslim?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Starting at 11:05 p.m. on October 11, 2002, three terrorist bombs detonated in quick succession on the picturesque Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people, mostly Western tourists, in the teeming bar district. Historians said it had been a very long time coming—119 year
The deathbed perspective
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s easy to forget that life is temporary. How would you live differently with that knowledge in front of you?
The longtermism that works—and the kind that doesn’t
Reading Time: 10 minutes In 2004, a tsunami and earthquake killed almost 230,000 people in 14 Indian Ocean countries. Many forms of relief then mouldered on the beaches—used clothes, high heel shoes, expired medicines—because “in-kind” donations are well known not to be effective forms of aid on a g
Eight billion of us: What does that mean?
Reading Time: 4 minutes November 15 is the UN’s estimated date for the eight billionth person to join the living human species. We might have hit that number a few days prior, or a few weeks ago. We might meet it tomorrow, or the day after. But some of we eight billion really like the feel of concre
The overthinking humanist: Life in a world of eight billion
Reading Time: 13 minutes At 4 a.m. on Sunday, I just needed fifteen minutes to finish a news brief. Fifteen minutes, and I’d be ready to leave for a trip to a pueblo two hours away. Fifteen minutes, and I’d switch modes completely: from English to Spanish, from digital to analog, and from the high-m