Photograph of a young bison, partially obscured by shadow

When the Bison Come Back, will the Ecosystem Follow?

Can a cross-border effort to bring wild bison to the Great Plains restore one of the world's most endangered ecosystems?
Silhouette of two bison on the plains

The Bison and the Blackfeet

Indigenous nations are spearheading a movement to restore buffalo to the American landscape.
Crowd pointing to UFO over Chrysler Building

How Washington Got Hooked on Flying Saucers

A collection of well-funded UFO obsessives are using their Capitol Hill connections to launder some outré, and potentially dangerous, ideas.
Model posing with the original Motorola cellphone

The First Cellphone: Discover Motorola’s DynaTAC 8000X, a 2-Pound Brick Priced at $3,995

We get the culture our technology permits, and in the 21st century no technological development has changed culture like that of the smartphone.
McCown's longspur, now called the thick-billed longspur, in flight over a field.

In Defense of Bird Names

Why the rich historical names given to birds should not be scrubbed for the sake of political correctness.
Stephen Kinzer

The Untold Story of the CIA’s MK Ultra: A Conversation with Stephen Kinzer

Stephen Kinzer discusses his new biography, “Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.”
Anthony Brinson, right, talks to a resident in Detroit on May 4 as part of a door-to-door effort to encourage people in the majority-Black city to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. (Paul Sancya/AP)
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Black Americans Have Always Understood Science as a Tool in Their Freedom Struggle

Fixating on Black vaccine skepticism obscures a rich history of Black medical and scientific innovation.
President Joe Biden behind the wheel of an electric car.
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Stagecoaches Could Fix Our Electric Car Problem

One solution to climate change may come from our pre-automotive past.
Ernest Wilkins and an atom.

The Unsung African American Scientists of the Manhattan Project

At least 12 Black chemists and physicists worked as primary researchers on the team that developed the technology behind the atomic bomb.
box of matches with faces drawn on the match sticks

Burnout: Modern Affliction or Human Condition?

As a diagnosis, it’s too vague to be helpful—but its rise tells us a lot about the way we work.
A black mother holds her newborn
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Bringing Midwifery Back to Black Mothers

For care in pregnancy and childbirth, Black parents are turning to a traditional practice.

Meet Benjamin Banneker, the Black Scientist Who Documented Brood X Cicadas in the Late 1700s

A prominent intellectual and naturalist, the Maryland native wrote extensively on natural phenomena and anti-slavery causes.
Roger Payne and Scott McVay's aural spectrograph rendering the whale sequences

Minor Listening, Major Influence: Revisiting Songs of the Humpback

Recorded accidentally by the Navy during the Cold War, "Songs of the Humpback Whale" became a hit album that changed perceptions about the natural world.
Four mysterious objects spotted in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1952.

How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously

For decades, flying saucers were a punch line. Then the U.S. government got over the taboo.
A man sitting in a chair

Making Medical History: The Sociologist Who Helped Legalize Birth Control

When professor Norman E. Himes published The Medical History of Contraception in 1936, he had made a tactical move, to legalize birth control.
A scientific instrument

How the Sinister Study of Eugenics Legitimized Forced Sterilization in the United States

Audrey Clare Farley on the scientists who weaponized biology.
Pedestrians wearing protective masks walk past diners eating outdoors in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood last month.
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Revisiting a 19th Century Medical Idea Could Help Address Covid-19

When germ theory displaced the idea of "miasmas" we lost important knowledge about tackling airborne disease.
Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America

Anti-Anti-Anti-Science

A new book tackles the deep and persistent American intellectual tradition we might call Science-hesitant.
Carrie Buck and her mother, Emma, at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, 1924

The Chilling Persistence of Eugenics

Elizabeth Catte’s new book traces a shameful history and its legacy today.
A comic overview of vaccine development production trials to deliveries.

The Last Time a Vaccine Saved America

Sixty-six years ago, people celebrated the polio vaccine by embracing in the streets. Our vaccine story is both more extraordinary and more complicated.
An astronaut on the Moon standing next to the American flag
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How the Cold War Arms Race Fueled a Sprint to the Moon

After the Soviet Union sent the first human safely into orbit, the U.S. government doubled down on its effort to win the race to the moon.
DR. JOHN J. CRAVEN, MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH AND THE PHYSICIAN WHO LATER ATTENDED JEFFERSON DAVIS, PERFORMS AN OPERATION DURING THE 1863 SIEGE OF CHARLESTON. THE DOCTOR APPEARS TO BE APPLYING A SPLINT TO THE LEG OF A PATIENT WHILE A MAN BEHIND HIM SEEMS TO BE HOLDING A WHITE COTTON CLOTH, LIKELY SOAKED IN CHLOROFORM, OVER THE PATIENT'S MOUTH AND FACE. | LOCATION: MORRIS ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. (PHOTO BY CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES)

America Has Been Through An Opioid Crisis Before

America’s first opioid crisis came after its bloodiest war, but the lessons of the original debacle have been lost in history.
Pills in a week organizer.
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Drug Companies Keep Merging. Why That’s Bad For Consumers and Innovation.

Over 30 years, dramatic consolidation has meant higher prices, fewer treatment options and less incentive to innovate.
A teenage boy is vaccinated against smallpox by a school doctor and a county health nurse, 1938.

The U.S. Has Had 'Vaccine Passports' Before—And They Worked

History shows that the benefits of such a system can extend far beyond the venues into which such a passport would grant admission .
A worker removes the Sackler name from a building at Tufts University in 2019.

The Problem of Pain

It’s easier to blame individuals for the opioid crisis than to attempt to diagnose and cure the ills of a society.
A screencap from a news show reading "Outrage after video taken inside Florida supermarket goes viral" from MSNBC.

Misinformation, Vaccination, and “Medical Liberty” in the Age of COVID-19

Vaccination is of critical importance right now. History shows us that our problems are nothing new.
Nurse Harriet Curley takes the pulse of a patient at Sage Memorial Hospital on the Navajo Indian reservation in 1949. (AP)

How Native Americans Were Vaccinated Against Smallpox, Then Pushed Off Their Land

Nearly two centuries later, many tribes remain suspicious of the drive to get them vaccinated against the coronavirus.
An illustration of a man holding a photo of a naked man who is curled up defensively.

A Virginia Mental Institution for Black Patients Yields a Trove of Disturbing Records

Racism documented in files from the “Central Lunatic Asylum for the Colored Insane.”

Paper Products. Powder Rooms. What Past Pandemics Left Behind Forever.

Disease reshapes our lives in surprising ways.

Stop Blaming Tuskegee, Critics Say. It's Not An 'Excuse' for Current Medical Racism

It's the health inequities of today, not the infamous "Tuskegee Study," that explain many Black people's distrust of the American health system.