King of fruits
Ordinary yellow pineapples were once so precious they were rented for display at dinner parties, but centuries of innovation made them commonplace.
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Chris Gillett on America’s data-center gridlock
Phoebe Arslanagic-Little on the wonder of epidurals
Deena Mousa on Alberta’s war on rats
Elizabeth Van Nostrand on the making of continents
Alex Chalmers and Ben Southwood on how to lie about radiation
Kevin Blake on how bacteria solved the mystery of inheritance
Kara Dimitruk and Ben Southwood on the revolution that made England rich
Michelle Ma on vaccines for wild animals
Samuel Hughes on the gilded prison of Tokugawa Japan
Maxwell Tabarrok and Zigmund Forrest on terraforming Earth
Samuel Rockwell Reed on labor-saving machinery an evil
Sonja Trauss on lessons from a high-fertility culture
Fertility on demand
Many women face a choice between career advancement or motherhood. But emerging fertility technologies could allow women to have it all.
The rise and fall of the Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League united merchants to bargain with kings, blockade cities, and even win wars. But when technology changed, defections began and the coalition fell apart.
The prehistoric psychopath
Life in the state of nature was less violent than you might think. Most of our ancestors avoided conflict. But this made them vulnerable to a few psychopaths.
The failure of the land value tax
Land value taxes are once again becoming a popular all-purpose solution to housing issues. But implementing them in early 1900s Britain destroyed the then-dominant Liberal Party.
Chinese towers and American blocks
China builds towers in a park, while America, and nearly everyone else, builds squat mid-rise blocks. The difference comes down to regulation, not culture.
Notes
October 2025
Artificial used to be a compliment
‘Artificial’ didn’t scare Americans in the 19th century. Why does it scare them now?
Microbubbles
It’s incredibly hard to deliver drugs to the right organ, especially to reach the brain. Tiny gas-filled spheres that burst on command could change that.
How the world’s first electric grid was built
In 1918, fifty systems supplied London’s electricity. Turning these into a grid required war, nationalization, and an act of engineering insubordination.
The Renaissance book that heralded growth
Long before modern science, Europeans learned to see their own time as an age of invention rather than decline.
The evolution of bacteria
Generations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists have watched evolution happen in real time, and it’s changed how we understand natural selection.
The three-thousand-year journey of colchicine
For centuries it was a poison. Then colchicine rewrote treatment for gout, heart disease, and later, the debate over drug exclusivity.
Washer woman
In 1965, married American women did 34 hours of housework weekly. By 2010, that had fallen to 18 hours. The dishwasher wasn’t the only cause, but it certainly helped.
How Airbus took off
Airbus is an example of successful industrial policy and the rare European company that is better than its American rival. Could its success be copied elsewhere?
Turning trains into trams
Trains often stop at the edge of town centres, forcing inconvenient transfers. Running railway lines onto tram networks provides a solution.
How a Norwegian chemist defeated lead paint
Lead paint was banned in the late twentieth century. Before that, it was outcompeted by a cheap and safe alternative.
The merits of unified ownership
Why do some neighborhoods get garden squares and graceful streets, while others don’t? The answer isn’t zoning or taste, it’s who owns the land, and how unified that ownership is.
The beauty of batteries
Keeping the grid stable requires overbuilding generating capacity, driving up costs. Batteries fix that.
Toronto’s underground labyrinth
Pedestrian tunnels are often thought to undermine urban life. The opposite happened in Toronto.
The first non-opioid painkiller
For nearly two centuries, pain relief meant effective but addictive opioids. Scientists have finally made something better.
How pour-over coffee got good
Pour-over coffee has long been popular with coffee enthusiasts, but it frustrated coffee shops because it takes so long to make. That’s changing.
Lab-grown diamonds
Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and vastly cheaper than mined diamonds. Beating nature took decades of hard graft and millions of pounds of pressure.
Where inflation comes from
How we calculate inflation has always been a subject of debate. Small changes that might seem trivial can lead to enormous changes in how well-off we think we are.
Doom scrolling
We may be close to rediscovering thousands of texts that had been lost for millennia. Their contents may reshape how we understand the Ancient World.
Libraries of matter
Libraries contain books, yes. But they also contain latex rubber, carbon fiber fabrics, and graphene aerogel. And in some materials libraries you can cut, cast, drill, sand, scrape, and sculpt too.
How to start an advance market commitment
Advance Market Commitments allow us to buy technology from the future to support its development: vaccines, carbon capture technology, and even spacecraft. Here’s how you can start your own.
Compensating compassion
Too few people donate their organs, dead or alive. How can we make it easier to donate, but avoid the abuses that some fear from cash payments?
Life in the time of Zika
I was deliberately infected with Zika to test a vaccine. Human challenge trials like my one could save millions of lives by developing prophylactics more quickly.
How Israel turned homeowners into YIMBYs
Homeowners are often the biggest opponents of building new homes. An Israeli reform reversed this by making homeowners the main beneficiaries of development.
Why we stopped building cut and cover
We used to dig up roads to put trains underneath – cheaply. Ever-better tunnel boring machines have made the disruption this causes unnecessary.
The future of silk
Silk is stronger than steel or kevlar. We are already using it to transport vaccines without cold chains and make automatically dissolving stitches. What else could it be used for?
The promise of SGLT2 inhibitors
SGLT2, a protein in the kidney, takes glucose out of the urine and puts it in the blood. Blocking this reduces diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease – but we’re not exactly sure why.
The asbestos times
Asbestos was a miracle material, virtually impervious to fire. But as we fixed city fires in other ways, we came to learn about its horrific downsides.
Watt lies beneath
The earth’s core is hot. So hot, that if we drilled deep enough, we could power the world millions of times over with cheap, clean energy, supporting renewables when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. But getting there is tough.
Waking up science’s sleeping beauties
Many scientific papers receive little attention initially but become highly cited years later. What groundbreaking discoveries might have already been made, and how can we uncover them faster?
The entrepreneurial state
War is hell. But by allowing more effective states to rule productive regions, it may have been a catalyst for Europe’s early modern advancement.
Upzoning New Zealand
New Zealand passed the most ambitious upzoning reforms in the world. Now comes the backlash.
The cocktail revolution
Cocktails aren’t what they used to be – and that’s a good thing. The search for fresher and more novel ingredients from ever further afield continues to revolutionize mixology for the better.
Making architecture easy
Unlike nearly all other arts, architecture is inherently public and shared. That means that buildings should be designed to be agreeable – easy to like – not to be unpopular works of genius.
Growing the growth coalition
Local government faces incentives just like everything else. If we want voters to encourage growth near them, we need to make it worth their while.
The discovery of copper
Today’s world requires vastly more copper than you could imagine, and the world of electric vehicles will require even more. That means finding new ways to find and extract copper from the earth.
Houston, we have a solution
Houston was notorious for its sprawl. But it has seen a gentle density revolution since the 1990s. Allowing neighborhoods to opt out of citywide reforms was crucial in its transformation.
How Mexico built a state
Building a state is not a matter of copying first world institutions. It is a tough process of deals and compromises. 19th century Mexico is a good example.
Understanding the Baby Boom
The West has been below replacement fertility once before. Then came the Baby Boom. Understanding that boom may help us deal with today’s bust.
Why Britain doesn’t build
The history of attempts to reform planning in Britain is proof that political willpower is not enough: you need to be smart, not just brave.
Thomas Edison, tinkerer
Thomas Edison is often accused of not having invented the things he gets credit for. He did something even harder: he built the systems needed to get them to market.
How DC densified
Washington, DC, has avoided the worst price rises that have plagued many other growing American cities. Arlington’s transit-oriented development might be the reason.
Taming the stars
Cheap, safe nuclear power is possible, but is all but prohibited in most Western countries. A regulatory sandbox for fission could shake us out of our regulatory sclerosis.
The end of acid rain
Ending acid rain was one of humanity’s greatest environmental successes. Here’s how it happened.
Every grain of rice
As climate change threatens crop yields, we need a second Green Revolution – one that, this time, is driven by genetic engineering.
The Maintenance Race
The world’s first round-the-world solo yacht race was a thrilling and, for some, deadly contest. Its contestants’ efforts can teach us about the art of maintenance.
The decline and fall of the British economy
When America’s economy overtook Britain’s a century ago, it remade the world order. How it happened is still debated.
Real peer review has never been tried
Outdated forms of peer review create bottlenecks that slow science. But in a world where research can now circulate rapidly on the Internet, we need to develop new ways to do science in public.
Reclaiming the roads
Until recently, roads were shared between a messy mix of cyclists, stagecoaches, carts, horses, and pedestrians, with no dominant user.
Age of the bacteriophage
Bacteriophages – viruses that infect bacterial cells – were almost forgotten in the age of antibiotics. Now as bacterial resistance grows, they may return to help us in our hour of need.
Why innovation prizes fail
History’s most famous innovation prize—the longitude rewards—is misunderstood. Innovation prizes are best at promoting refinements, not revolutions.
Local warming
Gas heating is bad for the environment. But home-built heat pumps aren’t perfect either.
How polyester bounced back
Polyester went from being the world’s most hated fabrics to one of its favorites. It’s so successful that many people don’t even realize they’re wearing polyester today.
Scientific slowdown is not inevitable
Some think of advances in science and technology through the metaphor of low-hanging fruit: we “picked” the easy ones, and the rest will be very difficult.
Why we duel
Duels can be brutal and even lethal. But duels emerged in societies around the world for an important reason: to control and manage violence, not just to celebrate it.
Why Ireland’s housing bubble burst
Ireland’s housing bubble and bust has become emblematic of what not to do in housing debates around the world. The only problem is nobody agrees what actually went wrong.
Why skyscrapers are so short
The height of skyscrapers is limited by physical, economic and regulatory barriers, but we should want to overcome them and build taller. Here’s how we can do it.
Parenting as a public good
Society has free-ridden on women for millennia, benefiting from the children they’ve had while bearing few of the costs. But as women have gained other options, birth rates have fallen.
Against the survival of the prettiest
Many modern buildings put up today seem uglier than traditional ones around them. Some say this is because we’ve torn down the ugly old buildings, and only see the survivors. Are they right?
Who cares about plagiarism?
Plagiarism is unforgivable in academia but it’s not plagiarism itself that should trouble us. It’s carelessness and a lack of originality.
Natalism for progressives
Without new humans, growth will slow, and we will be less likely to reach the stars. But pro-natalism has been captured by a range of unsavory voices. There is an alternative.
How trust undermines science
Our success is based on scientific discovery, so it’s not surprising how much faith we put into it. But we now trust science so implicitly that our trust undermines the institution itself.
Better eats
The kitchen of 2020 looks mostly the same as that of 1960. But what we do in it has changed dramatically, almost entirely for the better—due to a culture of culinary innovation.
Buyers of first resort
How do technologies get off the ground? As well as seed funding, many of the best technologies require Buyers of First Resort, which buy products until they improve enough to get to efficient scale.
The future of weight loss
We have eradicated smallpox, cured many bacterial diseases, and invented a vaccine for Covid-19 within the year. But for a very long time we haven’t had a single good treatment for obesity.
Asteroid spotting
Could an asteroid wipe out human civilisation like it may have eliminated the dinosaurs? Big asteroids come along extremely rarely and our monitoring systems are effective and well funded.
Why didn’t suicides rise during Covid?
Covid-19 brought death, suffering and financial straits, so it was unsurprising that depression rose around the world. But when the data came in, we found suicide did not – and it’s a mystery why.
Why Tesla bought bitcoin
Everybody loves to hate Bitcoin. Yet big business is spending hundreds of millions on it, helping to drive the price higher and higher. It’s easy to dismiss that as a marketing fad.
Burying the lead
Researchers have known for decades that lead poisoning damages brains and worsens crime, but millions of Americans still drink contaminated water every day. Here’s how we can fix that.
This is what peak culture looks like
Is the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe a sign of art in decline? It’s common for people to assert that film, art, music and literature are getting worse. This is why they’re wrong.
Interview: Ted Nordhaus on ecomodernism
Are technology and the environment friends or foes? In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss climate policy, activism and ecomodernism with Ted Nordhaus.
We don’t know how to fix science
The conversation around science is full of ideas for reform, but how do we know which ones will be effective? To find out what works, we need to apply the scientific method to science itself.
The speed of science
Critics of scientific reform say that transparency comes at the cost of speed. What can disciplines learn from each other to break away from this crisis?
How I learned to stop worrying and love the debt
Protecting people’s health during the pandemic will increase debt, but the economic consensus is that we shouldn’t be concerned.
Why tech cannot escape expensive housing
As rental prices continue to climb in San Francisco, tech firms have looked to relocate in other cities. Without major housing reforms, the next Silicon Valley will face the same fate.
How Covid brought the future back
Crises upend plans, force people to re-evaluate their priorities, and bring into focus new goals. Financial markets give us hints of what we can expect from the aftermath of Covid-19.
A place in the sun
While rents have been soaring for years in urban areas around the world, one Australian city has weathered the storm. What can the world learn from the experiences of Sydney?
What ails the social sciences
Bad incentives, muddled theory and no practical use. The condition of the social sciences has been blamed on a great variety of things; what’s really at fault and how do we know?
In praise of pastiche
Building traditionalist architecture today is derided as inauthentic pastiche. But this perspective turns a blind eye to the dramatic and sophisticated ways that design has been applied throughout history.
Clusters rule everything around me
Some of the greatest advances in technology have emerged from bringing intelligent people together to solve problems. How do tech clusters develop & how can we use them to replicate past successes?
Seeing on the far side of the moon
Electrical interference has restricted what humans can observe with telescopes. To make leaps as a species, now’s the time for us to build a telescope on the far side of the moon.
Escaping science’s paradox
Scientific research today is afflicted by poor reliability and low utility, despite the best efforts of individual researchers.
Innovation is not linear
Many have argued that innovation develops in a simple linear fashion – from research to experimentation to engineering.
Securing posterity
New technologies can be dangerous, threatening the very survival of humanity. Is economic growth inherently risky, and how do we maximize the chances of a flourishing future?
Interview: Mike Solana on tech and its critics
In spite of major technological progress, tech is often envisioned in the media with pessimism and dread.