Clive James— Both The Sopranos and Band of Brothers were HBO cable productions, and their collective impact might tend to persuade us that network television was left nowhere. But it’s a law of the arts that a stylistic innovation gets instantly everywhere, like heat or cold; and in fact, even while HBO
Nick Yee— Gender is a hotly contested topic in gaming. There is a lot of noise and vitriol, but at its core, much of the debate revolves around the shifting demographics of gaming due to its mainstreaming, and the resulting tension over who gets to be a real “gamer” and
Bernd Brunner— History often rewards great breakthroughs but ignores the preparatory steps that made those achievements possible. The Apollo program, for instance, has been documented in great detail and still receives ample attention, but what of the extraordinary labors that led to that summit? How was flight to the moon
Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle— Asking, with the comedian George Carlin, “What wine goes with Cap’n Crunch?” might not actually be as trivial as it sounds. In fact, many people spend a lot of time worrying about which foods go best with which wines. This concern is not frivolous: the
Philip N. Howard— The internet of things will help bring structure to global politics, but we must work for a structure we want. This is a challenging project, but if we don’t take it on our political lives will become fully structured by algorithms we don’t understand, data flows we
Jon Willis— Galileo entered Jupiter orbit on December 8, 1989, just one day after the drama and revelations of the descent probe. Although Galileo was a Jupiter orbiter, the proximity of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto offered the opportunity for multiple flybys of the Galilean satellites. During its eight-year mission to Jupiter, Galileo completed thirty-five
Geoffrey Parker— Once upon a time, climate change was a hot topic. In 1979 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations Environment Programme, the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation paid for 250 historians, geographers, archaeologists and climatologists from thirty countries to share their expertise
Dieter Helm— When the Saudis decided to draw a halt to the great shale oil boom in the United States at the end of 2014, they thought they could administer a short, sharp shock of lower prices that would kill off this threat, and then the market would rebalance again
Scientists have finally measured gravitational waves from the collision of black holes. Marcia Bartusiak explains why this matters and talks about some of the universe’s most mysterious objects.
Brooke Erin Duffy— With the skyrocketing growth of the independent employment economy, entrepreneurialism has emerged as a profoundly romanticized ideal for workers and career aspirants alike. A survey published last year by the Economic Innovation Group reported that sixty-two percent of eighteen to thirty-four year olds have considered launching their