Special Edition

For 30,000 years our species has been changing remarkably quickly. And we're not done yet

Making peace with the biosphere will require building communities and relationships that are focused on protecting life—human and nonhuman

Cooperation made Homo sapiens the last human species standing

Carbon dioxide has done plenty of damage before

Vaccines and drugs drove a century of progress, but today’s contagions thrive on inequality

Humans are profoundly altering the earth. Is our impact enough to matter across geologic time? Some say it is. Welcome to the Anthropocene

Solving today’s complex, global problems will take interdisciplinary science

Quality of life on an increasingly crowded planet depends on decisions made today

Darwin would be delighted by the story his successors have revealed

AI will serve our species, not control it

Parts of the brain involved in language and cognition have enlarged greatly over an evolutionary timescale

Urban areas can improve the planet as well as people's lives if we design them to be much more resourceful with energy, water, food and minerals

Technology is blurring the lines between consumers and producers, amateurs and professionals, and laypeople and experts. We’re just starting to understand the implications

If we do it right, we could become a long-term stabilizing force for the planet

The Arctic climate is shattering record after record, altering weather worldwide

Climate change is accelerating the spread of disease—and making it much harder to predict outbreaks

It’s time to replace gross domestic product with real metrics of well-being and sustainability

Power imbalances facilitate environmental degradation—and the poor suffer the consequences