Beats: Disability “Disable” is an active verb, and disability describes the social and environmental barriers that prevent access just as much as an individual body’s physical reality.

    The Way We Work: A Reading List A crash course in new developments in employment and labor.

    Dreaming Up Inventions for an Afrofuturist World Three magical tools necessary for both liberation and laughter.

    The Roots of an Epidemic From apartheid labor policies to everyday sexism, socio-political issues influence the spread of TB disease and the effectiveness of health responses. To tackle the epidemic, we need systemic changes.

    Let Robots Handle Your Emotional Burnout at Work But as robotics and computing evolve, some researchers foresee a future where technology can relieve the long-held emotional burden of some of these professions. They think we owe it to the service workforce to offer a new frontline of robotic protection. In fact, they think it’s far overdue–but does that actually mean just automating these jobs away?

    To Board a Cruise Ship–and Never Get Off Meet the retirees who never stop moving.

    Fowl Plague

    Pandemics have threatened humanity in the past–and avian influenza may well be the next one due.
    Duncan Geere
    Aug 4, 2017
    A vast stack of containers on a ship

    Postcards From a Supply Chain

    A series that traces consumer goods back through the global shipping system to their source.
    Dan Williams
    Jan 21, 2015

    The Human Machine

    A series about the increasingly blurred lines between us and our machines.
    Ian Steadman
    Aug 23, 2017

    Beats: Space

    Space is where we project our dreams–and our nightmares–of the future.

    Beats: Food

    Food structures our day, and food systems shape our world

    Beats: Disability

    “Disable” is an active verb, and disability describes the social and environmental barriers that prevent access just as much as an individual body’s physical reality.

    Beats: Health

    Access to health care is as much a matter of public policy as it is the size of a person’s pocketbook; within a doctor’s office, many factors affect the quality of treatment.

    A close-up of a smartphone, showing social media apps like Twitter and Facebook

    Why an App Monitoring Your Distress on Twitter Does More Harm Than Good

    A suicide prevention charity demonstrates that intent is not magic
    Jakob Whitfield
    Nov 7, 2014 2 min read

    On Certainty and the Illusion of Control

    Why popular solutions often fail to address big problems–like climate change–and what this says about us all
    Joshua Carroll
    Mar 9, 2016 6 min read

    Millennials Are Right to Kill the American Car

    If previous generations were given this many choices–and were faced with a driverless-car future in the coming decades–would cars, that romantic idea of hitting the open road in a sleek ride, play such an outsized role in the past 75 years of American culture?
    Elizabeth Minkel
    Mar 8, 2019 4 min read