Essays

School Reform Fails the Test

How can our schools get better when we’ve made our teachers the problem and not the solution?

By Mike Rose | Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Instant Gratification

As the economy gets ever better at satisfying our immediate, self-serving needs, who is minding the future?

By Paul Roberts | Monday, September 8, 2014

The Fear Factor

Long-held predictions of economic chaos as baby boomers grow old are based on formulas that are just plain wrong

By Lincoln Caplan | Monday, June 9, 2014

Loving Animals to Death

How can we raise them humanely and then butcher them?

By James McWilliams | Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Where Are the People?

Evangelical Christianity in America is losing its power—what happened to Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral shows why

By Jim Hinch | Friday, December 6, 2013

Leaks and Consequences

Why treating leakers as spies puts journalists at legal risk

By Lincoln Caplan | Thursday, September 5, 2013

Laughter and the Brain

Can humor help us better understand the most complex and enigmatic organ in the human body?

By Richard Restak | Monday, June 10, 2013

Color Lines

How DNA ancestry testing can turn our notions of race and ethnicity upside down

By W. Ralph Eubanks | Friday, March 1, 2013

A New Birth of Reason

Robert Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic, inspired late-19th-century Americans to uphold the founders’ belief in separation of church and state

By Susan Jacoby | Friday, December 7, 2012

The Clintons Up Close

A friendship between two couples yields insights into a presidency and a marriage

By Jane Warwick Yoder and Edwin M. Yoder Jr. | Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Tales From an Attic

Suitcases once belonging to residents of a New York State mental hospital tell the stories of long-forgotten lives

By Sierra Bellows | Monday, March 4, 2024

In the Forest of the Colobus

At a Gambian nature reserve, troops of endangered monkeys—and numerous other creatures—enact a grand drama that plumbs the mysteries of life, death, and regeneration

By Dawn Starin | Monday, December 4, 2023

The Grinberg Affair

One of Mexico’s most curious missing-persons cases involves a scientist who dabbled in the mystical arts

By Ilan Stavans | Tuesday, September 5, 2023

A Kingdom of Little Animals

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of microorganisms made possible the revolutionary advances in biology and medicine that continue to inform our Covid age

By Laura J. Snyder | Thursday, June 1, 2023

The Goddess Complex

A set of revered stone deities was stolen from a temple in northwestern India; their story can tell us much about our current reckoning with antiquities trafficking