The Present

Superfast hyperloop travel gets closer to reality as Elon Musk receives “verbal” government approval for a route linking NYC and Washington.

Reality is whatever your body believes. Virtual reality knows how to hack that.

The arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby was recently forced to forfeit thousands of illegally imported artifacts.

Businesses have been adopting more diversity programs since the 1990s, but do they actually work?

A new report highlights the increasing violence faced by environmental activists around the world.

Former tennis pro James Blake makes a case for transparency in police departments.

He created Windows and made billions of dollars. But that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for a few small things in his early life. 

California prisons are about as off-off-off-off Broadway as it gets—but that’s where the emotional tools of theatre can make the biggest difference to people’s lives.rn

Primatologists and praying farmers show us why it takes a flexible brain, and many perspectives, to unlock truly groundbreaking science.

Many people were upset when NPR tweeted out the Declaration of Independence.

A pioneering study provides a detailed look at how the U.S. economy will suffer from climate change.

New research claims religious terrorism is on the rise, and it appears that it’s going to get worse before we see a decline in such horrendous acts. 

Racism is the acting out of biases learned as early as preschool, research shows. If racism starts at three years old, so should science-backed strategies to reduce it.

How did our world come to be ruled by a view of human nature that contradicts the testimony of much of history, and the bulk of the arts, and your daily experience? Mathoholics are to blame. 

Google is closing in on achieving a major quantum computing milestone.

Quartz has analyzed 100,000 drawings to see if there are cultural differences in the way people draw basic shapes.

The political and economic ideas of socialism are coming back into fashion.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is working in with video game developers to create a space exploration game called Space Odyssey.

Bennett Singer explains why coming out matters—for the LGBTQ community and the straight community alike, and especially for those who are not in a safe position to do so.

Sure, the old Greek guys from 2,400 years ago get all the glory. But these living philosophers have a ton to say about life, the universe, and everything as it relates to right now. 

ISIS, Hurricane Katrina, Fukushima—for each of these disastrous developments, there was someone with a bunch of data that no one would listen to.

Amazon’s blockbuster purchase of Whole Foods will lead to big changes in how we shop.

Everything is cheap and nobody has jobs. Welcome to the future. President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas fills us in on how we got here.

What made the Golden Age of Greece, and Western Civilization, possible? One author says “free trade”. 

The best career advice that you are not getting? Financial feminist and Wall Street powerhouse Sallie Krawcheck delivers.

Mathematicians are working to combat partisan gerrymandering.

Giant fans start capturing CO2 from the air as the world’s first commercial carbon capture plant goes live.

We tell Google things we wouldn’t tell our loved ones, or even our own doctors.

Elon Musk and many top CEOs condemned President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Can democracy remain vibrant if the public, and especially children, don’t have the tools to distinguish sense from nonsense?