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• Winter 2023

  The Complicated Legacy of Terry Wallis and His Brain Injury

  Joseph J. Fins

  illustration by Shonagh Rae In the eight years that I have been teaching a seminar on disability rights and brain injury at Yale Law School, I have never come close to tears. But last… Read More

• Winter 2025

  “The Currency of Power Is Increasingly Becoming Science and Technology.”

  Darío Gil, Molly Galvin

  Chair of the National Science Board Darío Gil also leads IBM Research, one of the largest corporate labs in the world. He discusses how science is the new currency of power, the challenges in developing a STEM workforce, and the possibility of a “NATO of science and technology.”

• Summer 2019

  Artificial Intelligence for a Social World

  Justine Cassell

  Will artificial intelligence (AI) mean the end of social interaction? I want to say right away—so that you can stop reading if this disappoints you—that I’m not going to answer that question.… Read More

• Summer 2024

  “This Is Also a Time of Great Possibility and Great Capability.”

  Saul Perlmutter, Molly Galvin

  Astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter is best known for his groundbreaking discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating—for which he shares the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. But Perlmutter, a professor of… Read More

• November 3, 2022

  Episode 20: How to Fix the Bus

  Brian Sherlock, Lisa Margonelli

  Buses are an inexpensive and easy-to-deploy form of mass transit that could help reduce traffic congestion and curb air pollution. But in the United States, no one wants to ride them—and for… Read More

• June 18, 2024

  Brent Blevins Makes Mars Policy in Congress

  Brent Blevins, Lisa Margonelli

  In this installment of Science Policy IRL, Lisa Margonelli goes behind the scenes of congressional policymaking with Brent Blevins. Blevins is a senior congressional staffer and staff director of the… Read More

• Summer 2021

  Unmasking Scientific Expertise

  M. Anthony Mills

  In early February 1976, two cases of swine flu were discovered at Fort Dix in New Jersey. The Center for Disease Control identified the virus as Hsw1N1, similar to the one that… Read More

• December 21, 2021

  Episode 4: Art of a COVID Year

  In the early days of the pandemic, communities began singing together over balconies, banging pans, and engaging in other forms of collective support, release, and creativity. Artists have also been creatively responding… Read More

• Summer 2021

  “We Really Should Be Talking About an Ethics of Policymaking, Not Just the Bare-Knuckle Politics of Policymaking.”

  R. Alta Charo, William Kearney

  Illustration by Shonagh Rae From stem cells and cloning, to CRISPR and chimeras, lawyer and bioethicist R. Alta Charo has been a key player in informing policymakers and the public on the… Read More

• Winter 2025

  The Heart Is Not Neutral

  Adam Briggle

  In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that justice is harmony and that injustice is faction—the disharmonies that tear society apart. The question, then, is how to hold a political community together. In… Read More

• Fall 2025

  A Brief Note From the Guy on the Table

  Robert Cook-Deegan

  A traumatic brain injury gave Robert Cook-Deegan a crash course in a medical research system tangled in technological dilemma and political paradox, a dysfunctional insurance bureaucracy, and the healing powers of superglue.

• September 10, 2024

  Cool Ideas for a Long, Hot Summer: Indigenous Sustainability

  Melissa K. Nelson, Kimberly Quach

  In our miniseries Cool Ideas for a Long, Hot Summer, we’re working with Arizona State University’s Global Futures Lab to highlight bold ideas about how to mitigate and adapt to climate… Read More

• Spring 2021

  COVID-19 Through Time

  Joseph J. Fins

  The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature.  —Lewis Thomas In the spring 2020 pandemic surge in New York,… Read More

• August 20, 2024

  Cool Ideas for a Long Hot Summer: Environmental Justice

  Danae Hernandez-Cortes, Kimberly Quach

  This has been a record-breaking summer all over the world. Many cities have recorded their hottest days ever, and June 2024 was Earth’s hottest month on record. Mitigating and adapting to the… Read More

• Fall 2025

  How “Archive” Became a Verb

  Amelia Acker

  Debates over a proposed national data center in the 1960s reveal how anxieties around privacy and digitization led to the shift toward corporate control of personal data.

• Winter 2026

  “There Are Two Possible Futures for American Science.”

  David Spergel, Molly Galvin

  Simons Foundation president David Spergel talks about the evolving landscape for science philanthropy, his outlook for the research enterprise, and remaining hopeful in an uncertain time.

• February 7, 2023

  Episode 25: What’s Driving the Electric Car Revival?

  Matthew N. Eisler, Jason Lloyd

  In 2022, there were more than 2 million electric vehicles, or EVs, on the road in the United States. In 2005, there were only about 1,000. The conventional wisdom credits better batteries… Read More

• Fall 2021

  “Science and Technology Now Sit in the Center of Every Policy and Social Issue”

  Alondra Nelson, William Kearney

  Alondra Nelson, the first deputy director for science and society in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, talks about “a new social compact for science and technology policy” that would make innovation more inclusive and equitable, reckon with the nation’s past, and use social science to improve policymaking.

• August 27, 2024

  Cool Ideas for a Long Hot Summer: Solar-Powered Canoes

  David Manuel-Navarrete, Kimberly Quach

  In our new miniseries Cool Ideas for a Long Hot Summer, we’re working with Arizona State University’s Global Futures Lab to highlight bold ideas about how to mitigate and adapt to… Read More

• Fall 2023

  New Voices on the Hill

  Yadira Caraveo, Jen Kiggans, Eric Sorensen, Brandon Williams

  Yadira Caraveo Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo. Illustration by Shonagh Rae. Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo, MD (D-CO) is a pediatrician and previously served in the Colorado state legislature. She represents Colorado’s Eighth (and newest) Congressional… Read More

• Fall 2023

  “How Does This Country Do Big Things?”

  Arati Prabhakar, Lisa Margonelli

  Engineer and applied physicist Arati Prabhakar is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and—as assistant to the president for science and technology—is part of President… Read More

• Spring 2025

  Let Unfunded Grant Applications See the Light of Day

  Stuart Buck, Christopher Steven Marcum

  Showing which proposals do and don’t receive federal funding can improve research and advance open science.

• Winter 2024

  The Limits of Data

  C. Thi Nguyen

  Illustration by Shonagh Rae I once sat in a room with a bunch of machine learning folks who were developing creative artificial intelligence to make “good art.” I asked one researcher about… Read More

• Fall 2022

  Collaboration on the Mudflats

  David D. Hart, Bridie McGreavy, Anthony Sutton, Gabrielle V. Hillyer, Darren J. Ranco

  We began in 2006 as a group of researchers at the University of Maine who were trying to align our work with the needs of communities. Motivated in part by frustration with the… Read More

• Summer 2020

  Public Value Science

  Barry Bozeman

  STEF at 75 Why should the United States government support science? That question was apparently settled 75 years ago by Vannevar Bush in Science, the Endless Frontier: “Since health, well-being, and… Read More

• Summer 2025

  Building Decision Points Into Research’s Slipperiest Slopes

  John H. Evans, Craig Callender, Neal K. Devaraj, Farren J. Isaacs, Gregory E. Kaebnick

  The controversy around a ban on “mirror life” should lead to a more nuanced public conversation about how to manage the benefits and risks of precursor biotechnologies.

• Spring 2026

  Constructing a New Knowledge Infrastructure

  Shannon Dosemagen, Gwen Ottinger

  An environmental knowledge commons could support evidence-based policymaking, but it will require long-term coordination across the many communities monitoring pollution and local conditions.

• Spring 2024

  “AI Is a Tool, and Its Values Are Human Values.”

  Fei-Fei Li, Sara Frueh

  Fei-Fei Li has been called the godmother of AI for her pioneering work in computer vision and image recognition. Li invented ImageNet, a foundational large-scale dataset that has contributed to key developments… Read More

• April 7, 2026

  The Future of Making Babies

  Emily Packard Dawson, Jason Lloyd

  Assisted reproductive technologies have helped many people have children, but the egg donors behind this process are often overlooked. Emily Packard Dawson discusses donors and the donation process, along with the ethical and policy challenges raised by advances in reproductive technologies.

• Spring 2023

  Viral Suppression

  Jack Stilgoe

  In November 2021, an investigative story in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) with the headline “Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial” received more… Read More