The future of homo sapiens.

On the moral behavior of animals.

Why do Ikarians live so long—and remain mentally sharp until the end?

We know we need it, but we don’t know why.

Two nineteenth century paleontologists, once friends and colleagues, become bitter enemies.

"But years ago, there was room for friendship. They talked for hours at Haddonfield, grinning in helpless academic passion and exclaiming at their own twin hearts. They ate breakfast together on a heap of rock in the marl pits, black bread and coffee as the sun swam into the sky. Cope in shirtsleeves, a boy's face, looking more like Marsh's son than his contemporary."

“For every other kid in the room, the science experiment probably amounts to just another classroom activity, but for the Nashes the project is a reminder of Molly’s own fight for life and the controversial cutting-edge medicine that saved her.”

The rise of drug-resistant gonorrhea.

The story of a device that delivers electric shocks to students at a school for special needs.

A prehistoric human specimen sets precipitous events in motion.

"Whereas before we would march down the sterile, artificially lit halls of the Institute, nodding to one another as we passed, the air around us a cold flutter of clipboards and clicking pens, we now began to stop and greet one another, laughing. Two weeks with Loeka, and some of the men started showing up to the lab in more brightly colored shirts and gag neckties."

How meteorologists are improving their predictive powers.

The day Hurricane Irene nearly drowned Prattsville, New York.

A psychological, historical and neurological look at Alcoholics Anonymous.

An essay on Alcor – “the Arizona cryonics company that has put the body of Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams in cryogenic suspension, in the hope he may one day rise again” – and the desire to live forever.

The story of John Laroche, which led to Orleans’ The Orchid Thief, and tangentially, the film Adaptation.

On getting a brain implant to slow the progress of Parkinson’s disease.

How memories go wrong.

On the economics, impact, and communities of the international pipeline.

An armchair astronaut attempts to become the first black man to walk on the moon.

"The robot had this fold-down flap on its backside and Wesley sat there, buckled in, and told us he and the robot were going to outer space. There were fuses attached to the thing's feet and we stood back as he lit them like Wile E. Coyote. Well, that crazy robot went up all right—right up in flames! And we all about fell on our faces laughing, Wesley loudest of all."

“For the first few days after the surgery, it was difficult to separate out my newly implanted sense from the bits of pain and sensation created by the trauma of having the magnet jammed in my finger.”

A father and his daughter observe the emergence of mysterious, animal-like oil rigs.

"Only the most violent post-return decommissioning could stop all this, only second deaths, from which the rigs did not come back again, kept them from where they wished to go, to drill. Once chosen, a place might be visited by any one of the wild rigs that walked out of the abyss. As if such locations had been decided collectively. UNPERU observed the nesting sites, more all the time, and kept track of the rigs themselves as best they could, of their behemoth grazing or wandering at the bottom of the world."

On the uneasy relationship between magic and medicine.

On the legal history of LSD in America and a researcher who never gave up on the drug’s promise.

The 1920s experiment to reverse-engineer wild cows.

The scientific case for brain preservation and mind uploading.