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Your morning coffee is one of modern life’s underrated miracles.
A medical field that almost died is quietly fixing one disease at a time.
Coal’s century at the top of the world’s power mix is over.
How one number explains how we’re winning the 60-year war on smoking.
Making a difference in the world doesn’t require changing your job.
We have the tools to end the virus. The question is whether we’ll abandon them.
How scientists (and the rest of us) are finding 16,000 new species a month.
Paul Ehrlich predicted hundreds of millions would starve thanks to overpopulation. Here’s what actually happened.
Why the telephone is the most important technology you’ve stopped thinking about.
Crime is falling to historic lows. This economist knows how to make it plunge even faster.
William Foege helped give us a world without smallpox. We’re marking his death by letting measles come back.
The quiet economic miracle hiding in your grocery bill.
We’re finally making progress toward a universal flu vaccine.
The decline of burglary and robbery, explained.
It’s been more than eight years since the last nuclear explosion. How long will the pause last?
The high seas used to be the wild west of the ocean, but a new treaty could finally bring oversight.
The ability to actually change your life is a very modern kind of progress. Here how to make it real in 2026.
Five strangers who risked everything to save someone else.
How politics, not parasites, became the biggest threat in the fight against malaria
De-extinction, drinking, and a whole new thing that could end the world.
From a CRISPR baby to a closing ozone hole, 5 actually good things from 2025.
What if the best use of AI is restarting the world’s idea machine?
The affordability crisis is a growth crisis.
The world is aging out of killing one another.
How doctors learned to stop childhood food allergies.
New data shows foreign PhD enrollment remains steady, but the risks to America’s foreign talent pipeline are growing.
We’ve forgotten how radical household appliances are.
The decline of one of America’s biggest health crises, in two charts.
More cities are finally choosing bikes over cars.
We’ve made tremendous progress against famine — but hunger hasn’t disappeared.
Vaccines delivered by Gavi saved the lives of 1.7 million people in poor countries
The major decline in city fires, explained in two charts.
The most life-changing feature on your phone is hiding in “Accessibility.”
How MAHA gets American history wrong.
Few countries better exemplify how life has actually improved.
Science says that even moderate drinking is bad for you — and Americans are listening.
Nostalgia is lying to you about how good things were.
Why focusing only on what’s broken blinds us to what’s fixable.
Natural disasters may cost more money, but they claim far fewer lives than in decades past.
The Jeffrey Epstein story has swallowed the country whole.