Exposing the messy, technologized, and undervalued nature of reproductive labor
Messy coils of plastic tubing sprawl across the gallery’s concrete floor. The liquid inside—opaque, white…
Meet the designer behind gender-neutral emoji
Last year the Unicode Consortium—the group responsible for the selection and design of emoji—released a…
Inside the race to make human sex cells in the lab
The way we make babies could be about to change. Maybe. An embryo forms when…
The Download: synthetic sex cells, and brain stimulation
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s…
Software can do better than ‘male,’ ‘female,’ and ‘other’
For transgender and nonbinary people like me, a society organized into only “male” and “female”…
How do strong muscles keep your brain healthy?
We’ve often thought about muscle as a thing that exists separately from intellect—and perhaps that…
The Download: the impact of video games, and healthy brains
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s…
We may never fully know how video games affect our well-being
For decades, lawmakers, researchers, journalists, and parents have worried that video games are bad for…
A Chicago city sensor project goes global
At a table in the Berghoff German restaurant in downtown Chicago in 2012, Charlie Catlett…
The fight for “Instagram face”
In October 2021, Facebook announced a massive pivot, changing its name to Meta and going…