African Elephants have been killing people, raping rhinos, and exhibiting uncharacteristically aggressive behavior. An investigation reveals deep similarities between elephants’ and humans’ reaction to childhood trauma.

Karl Friston’s free energy principle might be the most all-encompassing idea since Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?

With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable.

Here’s how a tiny brush fire became California’s deadliest wildfire.

A giant earthquake is coming to the Northwest. Unfortunately, no one knows when.

It’s dangerous to blame the decline of one species on a single predator. We humans like to do it anyway.

New research is zeroing in on a biochemical basis for the placebo effect — possibly opening a Pandora’s box for Western medicine.

A report from Antartica, where the ecosystem is changing so fast scientists have no idea what will come next.

Chad Walde believed in his work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Then he got a rare brain cancer linked to radiation, and the government denied it had any responsibility.

The military wants future super-soldiers to control robots with their thoughts.

What if everything we know about dark matter is totally wrong?

How a professional football player became a top-flight mathematician.

An obsessive marine biologist gambles his savings, family, and sanity on a quest to be the first to capture a live giant squid.

On plagues, parasitic mind control, and magical thinking.

A quest for tigers in India.

Put a few termites into a petri dish and they wander around aimlessly; put in forty and they start stampeding around the dish’s perimeter like a herd. But put enough termites together, in the right conditions, and they will build you a cathedral.

Scientists predict Tangier Island could be uninhabitable within 25 years. This is the story of the people willing to go down with it.

Men have become increasingly infertile, so much so that within a generation they may lose the ability to reproduce entirely.

Birds like Roseate Spoonbills and Burrowing Owls are ending up in the stomachs of hungry pythons and nile monitors. Is it too late to stop them?

Daniel Kish is entirely sightless. So how can he ride a bike on busy streets? Go hiking for days alone? By using a technique borrowed from bats.

How Viagra went from a medical mistake to a $3 billion industry.

On medical acting and real pain.

The author grew up drinking and bathing in the toxic waters around a military base in North Carolina. Thirty years later, she returns to investigate.