As a being whose body contains billions of billions of atoms, I am subject to certain rules. To walk through my front door, I first have to open it. If I throw my jacket onto a chair, it will move in the direction and at the speed with which I tossed it, and stay on the chair until I pick it up again. I can’t affect the movement of a tennis ball in...

These days, you can easily find vapes in flavors that include “Lush Ice,” “Blueberry Banana,” “Mango Lychee,” “Hot Fudge,” and “Fcuking Fab” (whatever that is). No matter which one you choose, it’s almost certainly illegal. The tiny battery-powered devices that produce a mist of nicotine when you inhale, first popularized by Juul, are not outright banned—at...

The little clump of cells looked almost like a human embryo. Created from stem cells, without eggs, sperm, or a womb, the embryo model had a yolk sac and a proto-placenta, resembling a state that real human embryos reach after approximately 14 days of development. It even secreted hormones that turned a drugstore pregnancy test positive.To Jacob Hanna’s...

When Clark Giles first heard about ticks making people allergic to meat, he found the notion so unbelievable, he considered it “hogwash.” Then, in 2022, it happened to him. Following a spate of tick bites, he ate a hamburger and went into sudden anaphylaxis. His lips became numb, his face swollen, and his skin a “red carpet from my knees to my shoulders,”...

Recently, in a few cities across the country, Starbucks quietly unveiled a pair of drinks, one resembling a pistachio milkshake, the other a mossy sludge. Unlike with green beverages already on the Starbucks menu, their hue does not come from matcha, mint, or grapes. They are green because they contain actual greens—or, at least, a dried and powdered...

The first person who taught me something about death and defiance was the mother of a family friend, an older woman who had moved from Punjab to the United States to be closer to her son. I remember her as delicate and draped always in pastel salwar kameezes. After she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which moved quickly to claim her bones and her...