Rachel Gutman
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Getty / The Atlantic A ‘Mic Drop’ on a Theory of Language Evolution
Linguists now think our ancestors might have been chattering away for ages longer than they previously believed.
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Susan Walsh / AP A Telling Exchange at the Zuckerberg Hearing
How a question about vaccines made it into a hearing about cryptocurrency
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Kristoffer Tripplaar Disney’s CEO Gets Why Employees Want Their Bosses to Be More Political
People expect companies to step up because other institutions are failing them, Bob Iger said at The Atlantic Festival.
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Stan Honda / Getty The Quirk of Collecting That Skews Museum Specimens Male
Only two orders of mammals—containing bats, anteaters, and sloths—are biased toward females.
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Bettmann / Getty A Rare Universal Pattern in Human Languages
Some languages are spoken more quickly than others, but the rate of information they get across is the same.
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Joe Skipper / Reuters Hurricane Dorian Is Not a Freak Storm
Its record-breaking power is in line with recent, worrisome trends.
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Awanish Tirkey / Shutterstock The Mystery of ‘Skeleton Lake’ Gets Deeper
Hundreds of skeletons are scattered around a site high in the Himalayas, and a new study overturns a leading theory about how they got there.
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yurakrasil / Shutterstock Acne’s Wonder Drug Is a Mental-Health Puzzle
Accutane is already controversial for its possible links to depression. It could also have a range of other effects.
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Baz Ratner / Reuters Another Brutal Fact About the Ice Age Arctic: The Hyenas
As if saber-toothed cats weren’t enough.
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Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden The Care and Keeping of Raccoon Dogs
They should eat a varied diet—and they shouldn’t be allowed to escape.
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Agami / Diana Carpenter / Eric Isselee / ... The Least Popular Birds in the U.S. Deserve Some Love
They may be small, drab, and shy, but somebody’s got to stand up for them.
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Barcroft Media / Getty A Big, Weird, Pancake-Shaped Fish Keeps Surprising Beachgoers
The mola is a 5,000-pound bag of secrets.
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Aref Karimi / Stringer / Getty How ‘F’ Sounds Might Break a Fundamental Rule of Linguistics
If farming helped introduce f’s and v’s 12,000 years ago, it would challenge the principle that humans’ language abilities haven’t significantly changed since we first learned to speak.
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Lucas Jackson / Reuters The Three Most Chilling Conclusions From the Climate Report
Thirteen federal agencies agree: Climate change has already wreaked havoc on the United States, and the worst is likely yet to come.
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Debra Reid / AP Endorsing Dead People Is a Shrewd Political Strategy
Races like Dennis Hof’s show that political parties often have plenty to gain and little to lose from backing deceased candidates.
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WCVB / AP Dozens of Massachusetts Homes Exploded. A Gas Expert Weighs In.
Investigators still don't know what happened, but there's one likely explanation.
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NASA Hurricane Florence Could Be the Worst Storm to Ever Hit North of Florida
Since records began, only 10 major hurricanes have made landfall around the Carolinas. This one has the potential to blow them all out of the water.
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Clodagh Kilcoyne / Reuters James Comey Continues to Argue With Himself
In an interview with Katie Couric, the ousted FBI director excoriated Trump for undoing America’s norms—but let himself off the hook for slipping out of the FBI’s.
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Yusuf Ahmad / Reuters Could Quantum Computing Be the End of Free Will?
On the fear that too much processing power will make us cease to be human
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Francois Lenoir / Reuters Can Sacrificing Privacy Stomp Out Disinformation Online?
One way to ward off bad actors could be more information sharing between social-media platforms, researchers, and governments.
