October 7, 2025
(CT) – It’s only a short leap to see that if men and women are interchangeable, if we are defined more by our late-modern capitalistic output than by our sexed bodies, our common human limitations, and our social relationships, then … Read More
October 3, 2025
(CT) – A tragic accident jump-started my relationship with God. It also made me question his goodness. I spent a lot of time in the hospital wondering just what kind of God this was. I had no doubt that God … Read More
September 29, 2025
(After Babel) – Your life is my background noise Marketing your memories also desecrates them. You hand over your hope, your hurt, your life to be consumed, reducing it to reality TV. Your precious memories are my mindless entertainment. Your … Read More
September 22, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – After an unthinkable diagnosis, a Journal editor learned how challenging it is to find treatment and support for a rare disease—and discovered reasons for hope. I had come across chordoma during my late night internet research … Read More
September 16, 2025
(The Guardian) – The cuddly chatbot Grem is designed to ‘learn’ your child’s personality, while every conversation they have is recorded, then transcribed by a third party. It wasn’t long before I wanted this experiment to be over … ‘I’m … Read More
September 12, 2025
(The Atlantic) – The trouble with chatbots is not just that they allow students to get away with cheating or that they remove a sense of urgency from academics. The technology has also led students to focus on external results … Read More
September 11, 2025
(The Economist) – Adapting to an emptier planet will not be easy, but it will be doable. None of the predictions of demographic disaster seems plausible this century, and 2100 is so far away that forecasts beyond it seem pointless. … Read More
September 9, 2025
(The New Atlantis) – Today, the number is around 60 percent. Even patients scheduled for major surgery at a hospital, and destined for what is called “planned admission,” often come to the operating room directly from home. With roughly half … Read More
September 9, 2025
(WSJ) – There are codes for patients who try to change their sex—but no codes that speak to regret over the irreversible consequences that follow an attempted sex change or remission in the belief that the patient was born in … Read More
September 9, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Carrying out daily tasks in the MIT-designed outfit provides a taste of the challenges the elderly face, and motivation to prepare The MIT designers call the outfit the “Age Gain Now Empathy System,” or Agnes for … Read More
September 8, 2025
(New York Times) – Some 90,000 cases of Parkinson’s are now diagnosed each year in the United States, about one every six minutes on average. It is the world’s fastest-growing neurodegenerative disease, causing tremors, stiffness and balance problems. It is … Read More
September 8, 2025
(New York Times) – Americans are right to demand more from their health care system. But if we tear down the parts that work — the research, prevention, regulation and education that have driven decades of progress — we won’t … Read More
September 5, 2025
(Boston Globe) – When assisted suicide is legalized, safeguards collapse. Thus when New York’s Legislature recently passed a bill authorizing physicians to help patients end their lives, state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the measure’s chief sponsor, praised its “state‑of‑the‑art safeguards” and … Read More
August 26, 2025
(New York Times) – The painting beckoned me from across the room. In a bright, high-ceilinged gallery of the Courtauld, a small museum in London known for its collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, I moved past van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait … Read More
August 25, 2025
(New York Times) – If cherishing the suffering can make a nation kind, then discarding the suffering makes it cruel. It can breed a sense of contempt — why should we care for this hopeless cause? — and when our … Read More
August 22, 2025
(STAT News) – I’ve seen it as a psychologist — and experienced it as a patient Even through Zoom, I could tell she was unraveling. Her face was drawn, her shoulders hunched, her eyes darting just off-camera like she was … Read More
August 22, 2025
(The Hedgehog Review) – What happened when I fed my soul into an LLM. Freshly severed from employment (again), my idle hands and idle mind got up to tricks. Rearranging closets. Shredding. Buying plants that look cool but die. Extreme … Read More
August 22, 2025
(After Babel) – Last week, Reuters published an investigation that cited internal Meta documents and sources that should anger anyone who cares about children’s safety online. The documents explain that the social media giant’s AI policies explicitly permit chatbots to … Read More
August 19, 2025
(New York Times) – Sophie told Harry she was seeing a therapist, but that she was not being truthful with her. She typed, “I haven’t opened up about my suicidal ideation to anyone and don’t plan on it.” At various … Read More
August 19, 2025
(New York Times) – The Department of Health and Human Services recently announced it would wind down 22 mRNA vaccine development projects under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, halting nearly $500 million in investments. This decision … Read More
August 12, 2025
(New York Times) – Male fertility deserves broader consideration outside these isolated spaces. Mounting evidence suggests that exposure to so-called endocrine-disrupting chemicals present in many products, from food and beverage containers to furniture and agricultural pesticides, may affect male potency … Read More
August 12, 2025
(New York Times) – Science is a method for formulating and testing hypotheses, not a fixed set of facts. It should work alongside other ways of knowing, but it must also be protected from political or commercial capture. Perhaps I’m … Read More
August 8, 2025
(Christianity Today) – Mimicry is not the same as having intelligence, or as comprehending love and art. There is a reflexivity to our intelligence that is lacking in other creatures or creations. A machine, even an advanced AI model, cannot … Read More
August 7, 2025
(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) – Thirty years ago, as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, I wrote an essay on the 50th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In that piece (which can be found here), … Read More
August 5, 2025
(Nature) – Eighty years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, it is crucial that witness accounts are saved. Here is what one man told me. By the summer of 1945, after peace was declared in Europe, Japan was … Read More
