Four astronauts are on a journey around the moon, a mission that offers a rare chance to see our world from a distance, and ourselves more clearly.

One of the reasons people appreciate travel is that it offers a different perspective on home. Distance has a way of recalibrating what actually is important.

Now imagine gaining such a perspective...Read more

I know with all the bad news in the world right now the last thing you probably want to hear about are renewed threats to our democracy, but unfortunately the gravity is real.

In February, the U.S. House passed the so-called SAVE America Act, one of a slate of efforts to restrict access to voting nationwide through new documentation ...Read more

When Maryland Gov. Wes Moore appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, he dismissed as “nonsense” the president’s suggestion that the federal government should reconsider funding programs such as Medicare or child care during wartime. His broader point deserves serious consideration: National security and domestic stability are ...Read more

In ancient Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, both children of Zeus. She is joining her brother in the pantheon of American achievement and of scientific history.

This weekend, the Artemis II mission is en route to the Moon, carrying human beings on that journey for the first time in over half a century. During those years,...Read more

After deadly riots swept Los Angeles in 1992 in response to a jury’s acquittal of four police officers who savagely beat motorist Rodney King, he begged for peace.

“People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?” King pleaded.

His poignant appeal is no less urgent now, as verbal violence overcomes civil national discourse. ...Read more

What are we not talking about after a month of war in Iran? The news will continue to question the strategy or lack thereof. It will count casualties, rising prices, the remaining days until November — but what it will not tally is the egregious cost to the planet.

The numbers are dumbfounding.

An F-16 in combat consumes as much fuel in one ...Read more

More than a month into the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, ordinary Iranians are living under a double siege: external bombardment and internal repression. For some, this war has brought only fear — fear of what comes next, fear of whether basic life can continue, fear of how much more cities and families can endure. For others, enduring this ...Read more

Because my wife and I want to visit Paris, I started casually studying French, first with Pimsleur CDs from the library, then by watching videos online (I still can’t understand half of what they’re saying, malheureusement ) and more recently by speaking French with ChatGPT, which gently corrects my errors and compliments me on my clarity of...Read more

We’ve seen this pattern before.

A U.S. missile strike. An initial statement emphasizing precision. Then, later, reports that civilians — including many children — were among the dead. In Afghanistan, through the early and mid-2000s, these reports came so often they formed a grim pattern. Each incident is explained as an anomaly, but over ...Read more

The cover of National Geographic’s March issue featured a tractor tire dangling from a thread. Not metaphorically, but literally, because the thread is spider silk — five times stronger than steel but produced by genetically engineered silkworms. As National Geographic put it, this “supersilk” is “poised to upgrade far more than our ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Why would an immigrant living here illegally risk jail and deportation by trying to vote? That has always puzzled me.

And why would a political pro waste time and money soliciting votes from noncitizens when there are millions of legal voters available to persuade?

The answer is that undocumented immigrants don’t. And...Read more

Arthur C. Clarke’s third law says that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In an age when war and robots are making energy increasingly scarce, a technological breakthrough that can satisfy the electricity demand of, say, Europe without using a single lump of coal or solar panel sounds magical.

But the ...Read more

Studies show what hapless college grads learn the hard way: Some of their university degrees aren’t worth the big bucks they paid for them.

That goes for graduate students as well as undergrads.

According to a study recently released by the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center at American University, (originally based on ...Read more

For years, coastal communities like mine in New England have been rebuilding what corporate seafood systems ruined by exploiting our marine resources. Now, some lawmakers are trying to hand our ocean commons over to the same types of industries that emptied out our fisheries in the first place.

It’s been more than 25 years since I got my ...Read more

Thanks in large part to President Donald Trump’s disastrous policies, Democrats have a decent shot at not just retaking the House, but maybe even flipping the Senate.

Here’s the thing to know: Midterms are a referendum on the incumbent president. And this is especially true when the president is Donald Trump, who dominates every news cycle....Read more

In 2023, the leaders of the world’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies — OpenAI, Google Deepmind, Anthropic — signed a letter warning of the existential risks emerging from AI. It included this declaration:

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as ...Read more

Southern California’s Salton Sea was once a resort playground, with sunny beaches, celebrities and people waterskiing on the vast inland lake in the 1950s and ’60s.

Today, those resorts are long gone, replaced by a drying and increasingly toxic landscape. As the lake shrinks, wind blowing across the exposed lakebed kicks up toxic dust left ...Read more

For many years, the U.S. foreign and security establishment has made the safety of international trade a key argument for the benefits that U.S. global primacy brings to the world, and the need to maintain that primacy. This argument has often been made with specific reference to the security of energy flows from the Persian Gulf — which was ...Read more

The White House’s struggles to negotiate an off-ramp in Iran are a reminder of how crucial skilled diplomacy can be. Yet the State Department appears intent on purging and politicizing the ranks of the nation’s top envoys. Congress has a duty to push back.

Out of 195 ambassadorial postings around the world, more than 110 sat empty as of ...Read more