Culture

Making cookies is time- and labor-intensive. Here’s how a little math can make it easier and less wasteful this holiday season

Early cultural exposure can influence kids’ ideas about gender and STEM in significant ways

Unless we pursue AI carefully, the Nobel committee will one day give a Peace Prize to the people cleaning up its terrible consequences, just as it did with nuclear physics

Letters to the editors for the September 2024 issue of Scientific American

The searches for Planet Nine, bat viruses, life on Jupiter’s moon Europa and lucid dreams

Writers, artists, photographers and researchers share the stories behind the stories

Many parents choose sleep training to get their babies to sleep through the night. But the evidence supporting it is flawed

Gen Z can’t stand inequality. Why so many of its men voted Republican is a lesson in understanding male identity

If we lose sight of why empathy matters, both individual dignity and democracy suffer

Fast fashion may seem cheap, but it’s taking a costly toll on the planet—and on millions of young people

With the help of a powerful rare-earth alloy, magnet fishers pull garbage out of polluted waterways

The far side of the moon offers grounds for compromise between advocates and opponents of lunar development