Omicron’s Best- and Worst-Case Scenarios
A new, highly contagious variant could have terrible consequences. But if it ends up causing milder symptoms than Delta, there’s a real upside.
The Scariest Movie of the Year Isn’t a Horror Movie
The Humans turns a difficult Thanksgiving dinner into something grotesque.
When Multilevel Marketing Met Gen Z
Amelia Whelan used social media as an accelerant for her sales community. Then things blew up.
The Biggest ‘Oh No’ Moment in the Solar System
Everything has to go right for the James Webb Space Telescope.
The New Right’s Strange and Dangerous Cult of Toughness
An emerging culture idolizes a twisted version of “toughness” as the highest ideal and despises a false version of “weakness” as the lowest vice.
America is Running on Fumes
In film, science, and the economy, the U.S. has fallen out of love with the hard work of invention.
What J&J Can Still Teach Us
A vaccine’s value isn’t just in its peak performance.
The End of Roe
Today’s oral argument signaled that the Court is poised to reverse Roe v. Wade outright.
What the Peng Shuai Scandal Is Really About
The disappearance of the Chinese tennis star is an embarrassment to Beijing—and undercuts its campaign to present the Chinese system as a model for the world.
The Lab-Leak Theory Meets Its Perfect Match
Both pandemic-origin arguments depend on coincidence.
The Bad Guys Are Winning
If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.
COVID Parenting Is Reaching a Breaking Point
An epidemiologist joins five Atlantic parents to discuss just how long their pandemic trade-offs can hold.
Reiki Can’t Possibly Work. So Why Does It?
The energy therapy is now available in many hospitals. What its ascendance says about shifts in how American patients and doctors think about health care.
The Year America’s Hair Fell Out
The pandemic has been a near-perfect mass hair-loss event.
Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity
Scientists are finally starting to understand the centuries-old mystery of “ballooning.”
2021 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar
Every day until Saturday, December 25, we’ll present one new image of our universe from NASA’s orbiting telescope.
How Leisure Time Became Work
The rise of the attention economy has accelerated our habit of engaging with our hobbies in a data-driven way.
Beijing Keeps Trying to Rewrite History
A monument to the Tiananmen Square massacre faces the threat of removal, part of a broader effort in Hong Kong to erase the public memory.
America’s Great Divergence
A growing earnings gap between those with a college education and those without is creating economic and cultural rifts throughout the country.
Is Moderna Really Better Than Pfizer—Or Is It Just a Higher Dose?
It’s possible that a good deal of the difference in the shots’ performance can be summed up with a simple phrase: More is better.