The Best Articles in Society

The word "sustainability" gets thrown around a lot these days. But what does it actually mean for humanity to be sustainable? Environmental data scientist Hannah Ritchie digs into the numbers behind…

Teen girls have unique needs and experiences that are often left out of our built environment. Explore three projects across the world as they share how they are transforming public spaces for teen…

A party at the house of a friend, eleven o’clock, on a still-warm evening. A metre away from you, a group of people are chatting animatedly. Someone is telling an anecdote, it might be something about…

A major new report calls on humanity to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises simultaneously. Here's what that might look like.

«HUMANITY IS STRUGGLING to contain two compounding crises: skyrocketing global temperatures and plummeting biodiversity. But people tend to tackle each problem on its own»

Misguided assumptions about race are going mainstream, but hard facts can help you combat entrenched attitudes

These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.

A long-forgotten German economist argued that society and the economy would be better off if money was a perishable good. Was he an anarchist crank or the prophet of a better world?

«Money is abstract, absurd. It’s a belief system, a language, a social contract. Money is trust. But the rules aren’t fixed in stone.”»

This year I worked on fascinating projects in food, media, storytelling, AI and health at Magnetic, and learned many learnings.

Is Marriage Worth It? - Freakonomics

The host of On Being shares lessons learned from 20 years of interviews, including: how to live with open questions, counterprogramming against your negativity bias, and getting over the God question.

Shared by 1823, including Essaadi

«When you’re worried about what someone thinks of you, it’s rarely about that person’s opinions of you. It’s about your own opinions of yourself»

I think there’s an “ideal” net worth for everyone, when money not only stops bringing pleasure but becomes a social liability. And that number is probably lower than most people think. Business…

«They figured out what so many other people – the rich, the middle class, the aspiring rich, and everyone in between – failed to recognize.»

In 2008, the Japanese comic book artist Mari Yamazaki began working on a manga called Thermae Romae. Published the following year, it’s set in ancient Rome and follows a Roman architect named Lucius.…

Public opinion about AI can be summed up in two words: Slow. Down.

Long mobile conversations with the AI assistant using AirPods echo the sci-fi film.

Or: why you should be a lizard

There's a full-blown moral panic about AI right now. But the real risk is losing the race to global AI technological superiority.

«Historically, every new technology that matters, from electric lighting to automobiles to radio to the Internet, has sparked a moral panic»

Ideas about monstrosity were fundamental to ancient and medieval debates about the nature of humanity, and the rhetoric of monstrosity was widely used to dehumanize certain groups in medieval Europe.

More than 30 years ago, the "French paradox" got America bleary-eyed.

Rats are less pestilent and more lovable than we think. Can we learn to live with them?