This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.Forget “Got milk?”—the new question du jour is “What is milk?” The ubiquity of plant-based alternatives has challenged ideas about what the word means and...

On May 4, 1970, 54 years ago today, members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd of student protesters gathered on the campus of Ohio’s Kent State University, killing four students and injuring another nine. Several hundred students had been protesting against the Nixon administration’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, and the...

This article was originally published in Knowable Magazine.Shrubbery, toolsheds, basements—these are places one might expect to find spiders. But what about the beach? Or in a stream? Some spiders make their homes near or, more rarely, in water: tucking into the base of kelp stalks, spinning watertight cocoons in ponds or lakes, hiding under pebbles...

My voice was ready. I’d been waiting, compulsively checking my inbox. I opened the email and scrolled until I saw a button that said, plainly, “Use voice.” I considered saying something aloud to mark the occasion, but that felt wrong. The computer would now speak for me.I had thought it’d be fun, and uncanny, to clone my voice. I’d sought out the AI...

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is an exuberant dictator, a lover of military salutes who is being investigated for crimes against humanity, but he’s not reckless enough to invade neighboring Guyana, is he? Would the leader of a country in an ever-deepening economic crisis risk starting Latin America’s first interstate war this century? Well,...

One irony of the 2024 election is that, at a time when Americans profess exceptionally low faith in their government and institutions, their choices for president represent the most insider slate of candidates in at least a quarter century, and perhaps longer.The Democratic nominee is Joe Biden, the sitting president, a former vice president, and a...