Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair

The Next Climate Change Calamity?: We’re Ruining the Microbiome, According to Human-Genome-Pioneer Craig Venter
August 29, 2023
In a new book (coauthored with Venter), a Vanity Fair contributor presents the oceanic evidence that human activity is altering the fabric of life on a microscopic scale.

​Stolen Words: COVID, Ketamine, and Me
May 30, 2022
A Vanity Fair contributor’s encounter with psychedelics helped him emerge from a pandemic brain fog that had snatched away his ability to write.

“It Looks Like They’re Targeting Blue Urban Areas”: New Postal Service Plan Is Setting Off Election Alarms
August 21, 2020
An Oregon mail carrier believes a new initiative could potentially sidetrack mail-in ballots and disproportionately hurt Democrats.

If 80% of Americans Wore Masks, COVID-19 Infections Would Plummet, New Study Says
May 8, 2020
Here’s compelling evidence that Japan, Hong Kong, and other East Asian locales are doing it right and we should really, truly mask up—fast.

What Do Your Genetics Have to Do With Your Chances of Dying From Coronavirus?
April 30, 2020
Our genes might make some of us more susceptible to COVID-19—but which genes? Geneticists are sharing their vast DNA databases to find out.

“Prepare, Prepare, Prepare”: Why Didn’t the World Listen to the Coronavirus Cassandras?
March 27, 2020
People (Larry Brilliant, Bill and Melinda Gates, the World Health Organization) have been shouting about the current pandemic—“Disease X”—near constantly for a couple of decades. But talk and action are different planets.

“The Nature of Viruses Is to Mutate”: Mapping the Spread of a Deadly Disease
March 11, 2020
Using real-time data from scientists around the world, nextstrain.org, cocreated by biologist Trevor Bedford, makes the dangerous spread of Covid-19 into a thing of multicolored, branching beauty.

David Ewing Duncan Is Ready for the Robot Revolution
By Mary Alice Miller
July 12, 2019
In Talking to Robots, his new collection of short stories based on deep reporting, the science writer addresses our technological anxieties.

Inside the Very Big, Very Controversial Business of Dog Cloning
August 7, 2018
Barbra Streisand is not alone. At a South Korean laboratory, a once-disgraced doctor is replicating hundreds of deceased pets for the rich and famous. It’s made for more than a few questions of bioethics.