Around 1900, bubonic plague struck San Francisco and threatened to wipe out huge numbers of people. David K. Randall‘s new book, Black Death at the Golden Gate, tells the gripping story of the doctors who had both to fight the disease and convince the public of the threat.
Murray Gell-Mann was one of the brightest lights not only in physics but in all of science. A modern-day Renaissance man he had, according to current Santa Fe Institute president David Krakauer said Gell Mann, “a mind both cavernous and extensive — animated by the most intense fire of roguish curiosity that I have ever beheld.”
Are you distracted, unable to read deeply or for more than a few minutes? Are you continually checking your devices? If so, you’re one of millions whose brains have changed because of our technologies. Nicholas Carr is one of the world’s leading experts on how this works–and what we can do.
Our ideas about marriage tend to include assumptions about what is “natural” or “universal”–most of which are not true. Anthropologist Laura Fortunato helps us sort out the diversity of marriage and family traditions throughout the world.
Santa Fe Institute scientist Ross Hammond talks about the “snydemic” of climate change, obesity, and undernourishment—and some solutions that address all three at once.
Anthropologist and best-selling author Wade Davis talks about the knowledge, practices, and wisdom of non-Western societies, and how they can inspire us and help us to solve some of our most series problems—like climate change.
Archaeoastronomy of the last forty years reveals that Native Americans of the Chaco Canyon area were extraordinary astronomers, engineers, and builders–in service of a spirituality. What did it mean, and why did they leave the site? We talk to researcher Anna Sofaer and her colleagues.
Over 2000 children have been taken away from their parents at the US-Mexico border. Hear what a pediatrician and a child development professor have to say about the dangers of this kind of trauma to children and families.
Magma. Lava. Fissures. Eruptions. Tectonic plates. Angry gods. What are volcanoes, and what’s going on at the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii? Charlotte Rowe, vulcanologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, shares her experience as a scientist and witness to live volcanoes.
We’re living in the Anthropocene, the geological era of our own making, in which people dominate the earth, to the detriment — and death — of countless other life forms. Elizabeth Kolbert talks about her book, The Sixth Extinction, and how we are responding (or not) to the crisis we’ve created.