Culture

Discovering weird new shapes, turning oil rigs into reefs and making the ocean absorb more greenhouse gases

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

Letters to the editors for the July/August 2024 issue of Scientific American

Today’s cannabis plant is highly cultivated and incredibly potent. Treating it like a commodity, and not a testable, regulated medicine, is hurting people

What was once fair under the law may become unfair when science changes. The law must react to uphold due process

No, but the direction of our hair whorls could teach us about human development

To heal political division, start with common moral ground, a study suggests

In Absolution, the fourth novel in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach saga, scientists try to know the unknowable

People are pulling their kids out of traditional education to learn while they travel. Data on educational success are limited, but there are other reasons to consider worldschooling

Trump’s anti-immigrant good-gene-bad-gene screeds are nothing but factless eugenics for a new era

What works to improve health equity? And it might be time to end the leap second

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