Volume 22 Issue 5
Are Your Pets Contributing to Global Warming?
Want to reduce your carbon footprint? Replace your cat with a goldfish, or only raise pets that you plan to eat later on.
Game Designer Tim Schafer and Elijah Wood Discuss the Making of ‘Broken Age’
The acclaimed video game maker and actor tell us about the very modern creation of an old-fashioned adventure.
'The Inception of Zombie Wars,' by Aleksandar Hemon
Writing is nothing if not carrying the hopeless, backbreaking burden of decisions devoid of consequences.
The Sluggish Race to Guard the Earth Against Meteors
In the last two decades NASA reported nearly 600 exploding meteorites, many as large as 60 feet, rattling the thermosphere like dynamite. Is anyone worried about that?
The Government Won’t Let Me Watch Them Kill Bison, so I’m Suing
I think that if the public knew what was being done to the Yellowstone herd, people might demand a change in policy.
Writers, Scientists, and Climate Experts Discuss How to Save the World from Climate Change
Should we have fewer kids? Improve our farming techniques? Reform the energy market? Or just get better at helping one another?
Trucks and Children Are Sucking the Beaches of Morocco Dry
A critical ingredient in concrete, glass, and microchips, sand is a hot commodity—and in Morocco, illegal sand extraction costs the government $1.1 billion in unpaid taxes.
Getting Back to Basics at a Primitivist School
At ROOTS, you can learn how to make a longbow the way our premodern ancestors did—but can you learn how to live?
Seven Projects Pushing the Boundaries of Biology
For millennia, humans have altered our planet by clearing land for cities and agriculture, hunting animals into extinction, and introducing invasive species into vulnerable ecosystems. What's our next trick going to be?
The Baffling, Gruesome Plague That Is Causing Sea Stars to Tear Themselves to Pieces
"They twisted their arms together," a marine biologist said, "and they'd pull and pull and pull, until one of them came off... It was horrific."
The Ecotourism Industry Is Saving Tanzania’s Animals and Threatening Its Indigenous People
For more than a century, the Maasai have been corralled into smaller and smaller pieces of land in order to conserve the environment and precious animals—and to make room for deluxe suites and armies of tourists.