Features Archives

Social Justice

Can Australia Keep Beating the Economic Odds?

While the rest of the rich world stumbled from crisis to crisis, Australia’s economy has steadily grown. Is the nation just blessed by geography—or have its leaders figured out something we haven’t?

Mark Thirlwell

Social Justice

The Deluge

Rapidly advancing technologies are opening up astonishing sources of oil and gas all over the world. We are entering a new era of fossil fuels that is reshaping global economics and politics—and the planet.

Vince Beiser

Social Justice

We Aren’t the World

Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.

Ethan Watters

Social Justice

The Formula

How an equation cooked up by Mussolini’s numbers guy came to define how we think about inequality—from Occupy Wall Street to the World Bank to the billionaires at Davos—and why it’s time to find a new way of looking at the numbers.

Lisa Margonelli

Social Justice

It’s 10 P.M. Do You Know What Your Avatar Is Doing?

The psychologist Jeremy Bailenson’s quest to prepare us for the coming virtual world

Bonnie Tsui

Social Justice

Is Sugar the Next Tobacco?

It will be if Robert Lustig has anything to say about it.

Elizabeth Weil

Social Justice

The Fuzzy Face of Climate Change

Advocates and scientists have tied the Earth’s fate to that of the polar bear. But what happens if this lumbering giant proves more resilient than the rest of us?

Zac Unger

Social Justice

The Death Penalty Is Experiencing Technical Difficulties

How legal wrangling over the chemicals used in lethal injection could shut down capital punishment.

Nick Welsh

Social Justice

Speak, Memory

How the science of recall is finally helping us to learn other languages.

Bonnie Tsui

Education

The Music Man

Steven Angel uses drumming to teach literacy. Across L.A., juvenile-detention centers, schools, and libraries have fallen in love with his program. But scientists say there’s no reason to believe it should work.

Gabriel Kahn