From the Archives
Tessellation revelation
From my archives: the story of how mathematicians discovered "soft cells" that fill space without corners
Elise Cutts
Elise Cutts is a science journalist and former geobiologist. She is the author of Reviewer, too.
Q&A
The individual isn't what it used to be
Tim Waring thinks human evolution is shifting from genetic and individual to cultural and collective
Biology
Women have no genetic blueprint
Neither do men, but women *really* don't
Paper Roundup
Paper Roundup October 2025: dark matter, emergence, and dinosaur mummies
Papers on big questions at the frontiers of science, curated by hand each month
Essays
Does biology play dice?
Some thoughts on nature, nurture, and chance in development
Q&A
Political (neural) networking
Eddie Lee mapped the political landscape underpinning the increasingly polarized US Senate using the same physics that sparked the AI boom
Opinion
True fictions
The storytelling instinct conjures illusions of consensus in science
Paper Roundup
Paper Roundup September 2025: Mars life, exploding black holes, quantum computing
Papers tackling the biggest questions in science, curated by hand each month.
There is no time telescope
The Mars that may have hosted life long ago is our neighbor in space only.
Satire
The Loeb Scale for science PR disasters
The Loeb Scale measures the severity of science PR disasters from typos to fraud
Q&A
Hydra are a cosmos in a cuvette
To see order emerge from chaos, Anaïs Bailles shreds up immortal animals and watches them re-grow
Paper Roundup
Paper Roundup August 2025: Alpha Centauri Ab, Worm Circuits, AI Chess
Every month, I publish a curated list of scholarship on "big questions" in science — the stuff you'd find sitting on the desk of an old timey natural philosopher whisked to the present.