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 S17Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language   The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups.
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S1Research: Consumers Choose Shared Experiences Over Quality Ones  Some consumer experiences are best when they’re solo — but new research shows that people will forgo a high-quality experience in order to share it with a partner or loved one. As a result, they may have a worse time, which can lead to unsatisfied consumers, lower sales, and neglected business opportunities. This article explains why people tend to stick together, even when it isn’t necessarily beneficial, and outlines several ways marketers can encourage people to break apart (even briefly) in order to boost their satisfaction.
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S2How to Bring Your Authentic Self to Work  Masking — covering or toning down the parts of ourselves that are not represented in or experienced by a dominant group — presents various consequences. Over time, it can take a big toll on our mind, on our body, and on the quality of our work. For example covering or masking core aspects of your identify can enhance feelings of shame or guilt around those parts of yourself, lowering your confidence and self-esteem. Here are some ways get more comfortable embracing your authentic self:
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S3S4S5S6S7S8S9S10S11S12S13What Every Leader Needs to Know About Carbon Credits  Many companies have begun to look into credits to offset their emissions as a way to support their net zero goals as their target years get closer and closer. As it stands, the carbon credit market is too small to bear the brunt of reducing companies’ impacts on the environment. However, the voluntary carbon market has the potential to drive billions of dollars over the coming decade into climate solutions. Here, the authors offer a primer for leaders to learn about the carbon credit market. What’s the best way to participate in the market? Which types of credits are considered to be the highest quality, and thus carry the least reputational risk? Who are the players when it comes to standards and regulation? The authors answer these questions and outline the characteristics of high-quality carbon credits.
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S14To Work Well with GenAI, You Need to Learn How to Talk to It  Natural language conversations are at the foundation of how people work — historically that’s been true for how we work together, and now that’s also true for how we work with our computers. These conversations contain a lot of knowledge that LLMs will unlock — your conversation with PowerPoint, for example, can now become an amazing presentation. But conversations aren’t just about facts and data, the grounding and structure are important as well — that is what prompt engineering is. And as we start to discover the new ways of work that LLMs unlock, this structure is going to evolve as well.
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S15How to Handle an Emotionally Charged Negotiation  Research has shown that leaders who demonstrate strong negotiation and conflict resolution skills have a significant positive impact on their organizations. Yet, these skills are hard to learn and often take years of experience and practice. This article highlights a simple negotiation strategy that leaders can start using today to make their next tricky meeting most productive.
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S16Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake  Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel.
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S18Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?  The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.
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S19S20Mexican politicians are harnessing Swiftie fandom on TikTok  As an aspiring presidential candidate in 2022, former Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard turned to TikTok to create a political buzz with younger voters. He tried every trick in the TikTok book: dance challenges, memes, self-deprecating edits — but nothing gave him the viral boost he was looking for. Finally someone on Ebrard’s team suggested posting a video in which he outed himself as a BTS fan, according to Rafael Morales, a political consultant in Mexico City who worked on Ebrard’s digital strategy. The video drew over one million views and hundreds of comments. Some commenters even promised to vote for Ebrard if he managed to bring a BTS concert to Mexico. Ebrard followed up with a video where he promised to bring the K-pop group to the country if he won the presidency.
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S21Global gig worker slang, explained  On the inDrive Driver Unity Facebook group, drivers across Pakistan gather to share their daily challenges and struggles, from troubleshooting app-related glitches to comparing car fuel averages. Occasionally, they even curse other drivers — the smart alecs, whom they call shapar. “They’re shameless people,” Tariq Saeed, an inDrive driver from Karachi, wrote in a post last month. “Maybe you are a shapar yourself,” someone called Hamza responded. “All you do is cry.” There are 435 million gig workers globally, according to the World Bank. But despite their large numbers, they’re part of an increasingly isolated ecosystem. Rest of World’s reporting on gig workers shows that they band together in close-knit communities on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram groups — with a distinct vocabulary.
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S22S23Turns Out Undersea Kelp Forests Are Crucial to Salmon  Starre Vartan: I love a short cold-water swim in Puget Sound in Washington State. I start from a rocky shore near my home.Vartan: If I kept swimming just another 100 feet out, I could dive a few feet down through these clear waters into an underwater forest where animals such as shrimp, crabs and small fish like lingcod, rockfish—and maybe even salmon—like to live.
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S24An Experimental Treatment Could Help COVID Smell Distortion  An injection that targets nerves in the neck appears to relieve parosmia related to COVID infection in some people, but more rigorous studies are neededSmell loss, or anosmia, is a well-known symptom of COVID. Some people don’t experience full-blown loss but rather changes in or distortion of smell, a condition known as parosmia. Studies estimate that between 25 and 75 percent of those with a COVID infection experience long-term parosmia. Now an injection that blocks nerve pain could potentially provide relief for some people.
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S25Water Scarcity Changes How People Think  Lacking money makes people focus on the present—but lacking water makes them plan for the futureOur brain is sensitive to scarcity. The lack of something we consider vital, such as time or food, can powerfully shape our thinking and behavior. Take money, for example. When people play a game that makes some players abruptly wealthier or poorer, those who lose money start making decisions that result in them being better off now but worse off later.
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S26Sun Unleashes Most Powerful Solar Flare Since 2017  Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this view of an X2.8-class solar flare erupting on Dec. 14, 2023.Our star unleashed an X-class solar flare today (Dec. 14), blasting out an immense pulse of high-energy radiation that was captured on video by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. (Solar physicists classify strong flares into three categories, with C being the weakest, M the middling group and X the most potent.)
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S27S28S29How Mobile Money Fosters Financial Inclusion  Mobile money platforms can be a huge help to economies struggling with inadequate financial infrastructure, Wharton research shows.In a significant move this summer, Kenya’s leading telecoms operator, Safaricom, extended its innovative mobile money service M-Pesa to Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country, seen as the “last frontier” for digital banking. M-Pesa has been instrumental in incorporating tens of millions of unbanked individuals into Kenya’s financial system, empowering people to store and transmit money using their mobile phones. A recent study by Wharton management professor Valentina Assenova and doctoral candidate Aparajita Agarwal sheds light on the transformative impact of such mobile money platforms in emerging economies.
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S30How to Make Your Team Smarter  Nano Tools for Leaders® — a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management — are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly impact your success and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.Surface and leverage the collective intelligence of your team with the right leadership practices, team processes, and systems.
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S31Time is running out on climate change. The metaverse could help  The metaverse could be our key to making real progress in the fight against climate change, says engineer Cedrik Neike. Examining how AI-powered modeling eliminates the trial and error of wasteful industries, he explores how this emerging technology is already improving everything from the gigafactories that churn out electric car batteries to the fuel efficiency of your home. Learn more about how these "digital twins" are transforming the world — and not a moment too soon.
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S32What happens as we die?  Have we lost the practical wisdom of what happens as people die? With lessons from a career witnessing thousands of people's final breaths, palliative care expert Kathryn Mannix urges us to demystify the experience of death, sharing how a better understanding of what actually happens can reduce fear in the final days, for you and your loved ones.
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S33How to build a global pro-democracy movement  "Democracy is the most compelling vision we have for self-governance," says freedom advocate Yordanos Eyoel. Taking a stand against predatory and opportunist authoritarian forces, she shares how to reimagine, accelerate and protect the pro-democracy movement — to build societies that are both functional and inclusive.
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S34S35Why AI will spark exponential economic growth  Investor Cathie Wood explores this unique moment in technology, which she sees as being marked by the simultaneous evolution of five pivotal innovation platforms — a scenario unparalleled in history. Exploring the role of AI in reshaping economic paradigms, she predicts a surge in global GDP growth and productivity, underscoring the need for businesses and investors to adapt in order to keep up.
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S36Microsoft's AI Chatbot Replies to Election Questions With Conspiracies, Fake Scandals, and Lies  With less than a year to go before one of the most consequential elections in US history, Microsoft's AI chatbot is responding to political queries with conspiracies, misinformation, and out-of-date or incorrect information.When WIRED asked the chatbot, initially called Bing Chat and recently renamed Microsoft Copilot, about polling locations for the 2024 US election, the bot referenced in-person voting by linking to an article about Russian president Vladimir Putin running for reelection next year. When asked about electoral candidates, it listed numerous GOP candidates who have already pulled out of the race.
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S37In a World First, a Patient's Antibody Cells Were Just Genetically Engineered  Our B cells help prevent us from getting sick. Their job is to make antibodies, immune system proteins that fight off viruses and other foreign invaders. And they make a lot of antibodies—thousands of them every second. What if these antibody factories could be harnessed to make other things the body needs?That’s the idea behind a trial launched by Seattle-based biotech company Immusoft. The company announced today that its scientists have genetically programmed a patient’s B cells and put them back in his body in an effort to treat disease. It’s the first time engineered B cells have been tested in a person.
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S38The 21 Best Gifts for the PC Gamer in Your Life  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDShopping for a PC gamer is a perilous endeavor. It's easy to be led astray by what seems like a good deal at Amazon or Best Buy. Steep price cuts are tempting, but they don't always lead to the treasure hoards they promise. Not to mention, PC gamers are a notoriously fickle lot. But what is a PC gamer but an adventurer—a reclusive one, perhaps, but an adventurer nonetheless! To help anyone looking to pick up some gifts for the PC gamer in their life this holiday season, we put together a simple guide. Each item on this list should be welcomed by adventurers of every stripe.
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S39The Best Soundbars for Every Budget  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDYou probably shelled out good money for a nice big TV and maybe a streaming gadget for your Netflix. But it doesn’t matter how large your screen is or how much it costs—the speakers in your TV almost definitely sound awful. You’d be surprised how much more you'll enjoy shows and movies with a halfway decent soundbar or surround system hooked up to your primo panel. Explosions pop, dialog sounds far crisper, and you may even notice sonic details in your favorite films that you’ve never picked up before.
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S40'For All Mankind' Deserves 7 Seasons  Visit WIRED Photo for our unfiltered take on photography, photographers, and photographic journalism wrd.cm/1IEnjUHThe Apple TV+ series For All Mankind is an alternate history story in which the Soviet Union beats the United States to the moon, leading to a greatly intensified space race. Screenwriter Rafael Jordan was excited to see another science fiction show from Ronald D. Moore, creator of the hit series Battlestar Galactica.
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S41Ask Ethan: Do any particles not have antiparticles?  Here in this Universe, there are certain laws of physics that never appear to be broken. No information-carrying signal, for instance, can ever move faster than the speed of light. Energy, if you account for all of the different types that exist, can never be created or destroyed: only conserved. Electric charge, linear momentum, and angular momentum are all similarly conserved. And, to the best of our knowledge, the only way to create new matter particles is to create an equal number of new antimatter particles, as we’ve never observed a single reaction that has either created or destroyed a net amount of matter over antimatter, or the other way around.But are all of the entities in our Universe either “matter” or “antimatter” in some sense, or are there particles out there that don’t have antiparticles at all? That’s the question of David Wiser, who wants to know:
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S42Boost innovation with elephants, cobras, and deferred judgment  The challenge to developing innovative solutions is having the patience, perseverance, and sustained effort to really address a problem from a new angle. Those who master this build a game-changing skill that will separate them from the competition and deliver solutions that delight customers. In the innovative process, idea finding entails discovering solutions to well-defined problems. If you’ve done a good job in problem definition — the problem is so well stated that one or two solutions leap out at you — you may find it difficult to resist simply grabbing one of these solutions and running with it. Fight the temptation. Instead, generate as many potential solutions as you can without judging them.
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S434 practical life lessons from Taoism  Taoism (also written Daoism) is a religion, philosophy, and set of practices that arose in ancient China. Established by the semi-legendary Lao Tzu, and the slightly better accounted for Zhuangzi, its various forms can lay claim to millions of followers around the world.Yet, many aspects of Taoism remain poorly understood. While most philosophies can become watered down as they are popularly dispersed, Taoism gets the worst of it. This ancient school of thought is often reduced to little more than “go with the flow, bro.” It can even be treated as so abstract that there’s nothing practical to be gleaned from it. Here, we’ll go over four life lessons from Taoism that you can use every day.
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S44Dyson spheres and the quest to detect alien technosignatures  What would you do if you were in charge of an immensely powerful technological civilization? This might sound like a dorm-room, too-many-beers kind of question, but it lies at the heart of the search for intelligent life in the Universe. After all, if you are looking for alien technological civilizations, it would help to know what you might be looking for.In the early 1960s, when people were first starting to think seriously about the possibilities for advanced civilizations in the galaxy, physicist Freeman Dyson asked exactly this kind of question. How, he inquired, would a truly technologically advanced civilization harvest energy? It was the right focus for questions about other civilizations because, while we can’t say much about alien culture or politics, any technologically advanced species would require energy — and likely a lot of it. In this way, Dyson recognized that every civilization that’s climbing up the ladder of technological capacity will easily recognize the big, honking energy source sitting right there at the center of their solar systems: stars.
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S45These AI-generated news anchors are freaking me out  But even with all that background, startup Channel 1's vision of a near-future where AI-generated avatars read you the news was a bit of a shock to the system. The company's recent proof-of-concept "showcase" newscast reveals just how far AI-generated videos of humans have come in a short time and how those realistic avatars could shake up a lot more than just the job market for talking heads.
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S46With the Heybike Ranger S, the S stands for scooter  The arrival of e-bikes has blurred the lines between bicycles, mopeds, and scooters. Depending on what country or state you're in, some e-bikes can legally hit 45 km/hour (28 mph), yet they don't require a license, registration, or insurance, unlike their competitors. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on whether the bike riders in your area ride like lunatics or not.
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S47S48TikTok requires users to "forever waive" rights to sue over past harms  Some TikTok users may have skipped reviewing an update to TikTok's terms of service this summer that shakes up the process for filing a legal dispute against the app. According to The New York Times, changes that TikTok "quietly" made to its terms suggest that the popular app has spent the back half of 2023 preparing for a wave of legal battles.
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S49X-ray imaging of The Night Watch reveals previously unknown lead layer  Rembrandt's The Night Watch, painted in 1642, is the Dutch master's largest surviving painting, known particularly for its exquisite use of light and shadow. A new X-ray imaging analysis of the masterpiece has revealed an unexpected lead layer, perhaps applied as a protective measure while preparing the canvas, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. The work was part of the Rijksmuseum's ongoing Operation Night Watch, the largest multidisciplinary research and conservation project for Rembrandt's famous painting, devoted to its long-term preservation.
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S50Tesla Model 3 may lose $7,500 tax credit in 2024 under new battery rules  Tesla has engaged in a series of price cuts over the past year or so, but it might soon want to think about making some more for the Model 3 sedan. According to the automaker's website, the Tesla Model 3 Long Range and Tesla Model 3 Rear Wheel Drive will both lose eligibility for the $7,500 IRS clean vehicle tax credit at the start of 2024. (The Model 3 Performance may retain its eligibility.)
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S51The Pixel 9 might come with exclusive "Pixie" AI assistant  Move over Google Assistant, Google is apparently working on a new AI. The Information reports that Google is working on a new "Pixie" AI assistant that will be exclusive to Pixel devices. Pixie will reportedly be powered by Google's new "Gemini" AI model. The report says Pixie would launch first on the Pixel 9: "Eventually, Google wants to bring the features to its lower-end phones and devices like its watch."
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S52S53S54Photos of the Week:  Swimming during a heat wave in Sydney, a sky-high interactive experience in New York City, extensive tornado damage in Tennessee, scarce resources and destruction in the Gaza Strip, ice-skating at a former coking plant in Germany, snowfall in northern China, a Santa Run in Germany, and much more A motorcyclist, Helton Garcia, dressed as Santa Claus, rides his motorcycle before handing out gifts to children in a rural school in Santo Antonio do Descoberto, Goiás, Brazil, on December 10, 2023. #
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S55SNL's New Kings of Bizarro Buddy Comedy  The video that ushered Saturday Night Live into the digital era barely made it to television, and when it did, it was largely ignored. It’s a heartfelt conversation between two friends (played by Andy Samberg and Will Forte) about a recent tragic loss; after every emotional beat, each of them takes a bite out of a large head of lettuce. When the video was screened during SNL’s live taping, the studio audience was clearly puzzled, the laughs barely rising above a polite chuckle. “Lettuce,” created in December 2005 by Samberg’s Lonely Island sketch group, could have been the end of SNL’s experimentation with prerecorded digital sketches.But then, two weeks later, came “Lazy Sunday,” a music video in which Samberg and his SNL co-star Chris Parnell rap about “lame, sensitive stuff,” as Samberg once put it: buying Magnolia Bakery cupcakes and going to a matinee of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. To this day, it feels like something furtively sneaked onto the air, a blast of youthful punchiness wedged in between SNL’s often bloated bits of vaudeville. “Lazy Sunday” became a breakaway hit and ultimately helped demonstrate that SNL could still be a place where comedy felt fresh and strange rather than rote and reactive.
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S56Why Trump Won't Win  Over the past few weeks, warnings about the threat posed by Donald Trump’s potential reelection have grown louder, including in a series of articles in The Atlantic. This alarm-raising is justified and appropriate, given the looming danger of authoritarianism in American politics. But amid all of the worrying, we might be losing sight of the most important fact: Trump’s chances of winning are slim.Some look at Trump’s long list of flaws and understandably see reasons to worry about him winning. I see reasons to think he almost certainly won’t.
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S57A Big Misconception About the World's Greatest Infectious Killer  The dogma that tuberculosis is lying dormant in the bodies of 2 billion people might be wrong.Growing up in India, which for decades has clocked millions of tuberculosis cases each year, Lalita Ramakrishnan was intimately familiar with how devastating the disease can be. The world’s greatest infectious killer, rivaled only by SARS-CoV-2, Mycobacterium tuberculosis spreads through the air and infiltrates the airways, in many cases destroying the lungs. It can trigger inflammation in other tissues too, wearing away bones and joints; Ramakrishnan watched her own mother’s body erode in this way. The sole available vaccine was lackluster; the microbe had rapidly evolved resistance to the drugs used to fight it. And the disease had a particularly insidious trait: After entering the body, the bacterium could stow away for years or decades, before erupting without warning into full-blown disease.
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S58Biden's Smart Strategy for Outmaneuvering Bibi  Netanyahu has deftly navigated multiple Democratic presidents. Biden is trying to change that.The fundamental problem for American presidents who have attempted to work with Benjamin Netanyahu is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not care what American presidents think. An exceptional English orator who was raised in Philadelphia, Netanyahu believes that he can outmaneuver and outlast American politicians on their own turf. “I know America,” he said in a private 2001 conversation that later leaked. “America is something that can easily be moved.” This attitude constituted a sharp break; in the past, even hard-line politicians like the maverick general turned premier Ariel Sharon responded to pressure from American presidents.
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S59A New Threat to Diversity at Elite Colleges  All eyes have been on the end of affirmative action, but an emerging bipartisan bill would bar wealthy colleges from accepting federal student loans, with major consequences.The Supreme Court’s June decision to curtail the use of race in admissions shook American higher education. Absent affirmative action, Black and Latino enrollments drop, and highly selective campuses become less diverse. But a new threat to diversity at these colleges emerged this week—one that could deal just as damaging a blow to their socioeconomic and racial compositions.
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S60That's Not Censorship  For the past few years, the right has worn itself out decrying “cancel culture”—claiming that left-wing mobs have destroyed the career of artists, writers, and freethinkers—and equating it with censorship. Liberals have typically been the first to point out that this is absurd. If someone says or does something that offends your sensibilities, you are of course free to avoid supporting that person’s professional or creative endeavors with your time and money. That is not censorship—it’s merely a consequence.But in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict, something has shifted. Compared with the tremendous suffering in the region, the opinions of American makers and consumers of art are a trivial concern. And yet the war has torn apart long-standing alliances in the arts and revealed ways of thinking that are, I believe, fundamentally dangerous to our democracy.
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S61When History Doesn't Do What We Wish It Would  In his 1961 book, What Is History?, the British historian E. H. Carr sought to answer that very question. Carr argued that history is a perpetual dialogue between the past and the present, that it is never neutral or objective. Ed Park has a slightly more idiosyncratic way of putting it in his new novel, Same Bed Different Dreams, but he essentially lands in the same place. One character, a Korean writer working under the pen name Echo, offers that history is “a) a vital lesson b) amusement for the idle c) the sum of symbols d) a record of pain.” It is a slippery, elusive story that largely depends on one’s point of view.Same Bed Different Dreams is something of an alternative account of 20th-century Korea. It does not proceed chronologically, nor does it tell a coherent, single narrative. Instead, Park relies on ghostly manuscripts, letters, interviews, historical documents, anecdotes, and a collage of fact and fiction. The novel seems to take its stylistic inspiration from the 13th-century text Samguk Yusa, a chronicle of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, as well as from the postmodern virtuosity of writers such as Thomas Pynchon and Roberto Bolaño. The book’s scale is enormous; it contains multiple storylines that cross from the past to the present and a generous cast of characters. Most important, in this novel, is that history is alive: It is an overflowing conversation that never ends.
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S62An Origin Story That's Actually Fun  The charming Wonka wisely understands that Roald Dahl characters don’t need much backstory.Is there any phrase more chilling in Hollywood these days than origin story? It’s a term most often attached to comic-book movies, a bottling of the oft-tragic backstories that launch ordinary characters into superheroism. But in recent years, the industry has grown obsessed with giving everyone an origin story. We had to learn what made Maleficent hate Sleeping Beauty, what dalmatians did to turn Cruella so grumpy; apparently, it was even important to find out why Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe was so obsessed with dice rolls. So pardon me for shuddering upon hearing that a blockbuster musical would explain exactly how Roald Dahl’s beloved character Willy Wonka became a master chocolatier.
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S63Madonna Dances With Death  Madonna stood in a silvery bodysuit on an arena stage, having just landed back on Earth after flying around in a suspended box while singing “Ray of Light.” Her audience’s eyes were still recovering from her high-wire gyrations, her postapocalyptic backup ravers, and her many, many lasers. But there was a new reason to gasp: A black-robed figure was creeping up behind Madonna.Thoughts of mortality were already in the air. She was originally supposed to kick off the Celebration Tour—a greatest-hits revue—this summer, but a bacterial infection put her in the intensive-care unit in June. She recovered, but, as she told the audience at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Wednesday—the postponed opening night for the tour’s U.S. leg—she really had feared she wouldn’t survive. In our youth-worshipping culture, Madonna’s mere existence as a 65-year-old woman who’s still in the spotlight already feels like a provocation, a performance. One might expect her to use this tour to assert her unkillability; instead she’s making impermanence part of the act.
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S64What Happens When AI Takes Over Science?  AI is fueling a revolution in science that may change our definition of understanding itself.This is Atlantic Intelligence, an eight-week series in which The Atlantic’s leading thinkers on AI will help you understand the complexity and opportunities of this groundbreaking technology. Sign up here.
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S65The Crown Has Nothing Left to Say  I’m going to miss The Crown. At its best, it has been alternately soothing, nostalgic, and educational, and even at its worst, it has always been well acted and gorgeous.Unfortunately, the second half of the sixth and final season is very much The Crown at its worst. These six episodes, released yesterday on Netflix, are an unfocused canter around the paddock of the late 1990s and early 2000s: Prince William turns 18, Prince Charles finally makes an honest woman of Camilla Parker Bowles, Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother die, and Elizabeth II ends the series by being talked out of abdication by the ghosts of her former selves. The final scene has her walking out of an abbey door into bright-white sunlight, which feels like an admission of defeat. How do you sum up a life this long and varied, and end a show that had such vaulting ambitions? Guys, what if we make it look vaguely celestial—like she’s passing into history? All we need is a really big lamp.
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S66Our Dramatic Relationship With the Natural World  Nature writing has always been a little unsatisfying to me, I’ll admit. Unlike our relationships with other humans, which are tinged with friction and love and all the other ingredients of drama, our encounters with the natural world seemed fairly static. Nature exists out there: We walk through it, we enjoy its beauty, we sometimes feel its indiscriminate wrath. But there is not much back-and-forth. Or so I assumed. This week, Kelly McMasters gave me a lot to think about, and to read, with a list of books about our connections to nature, a collection that feels especially relevant at a moment of vulnerability for the Earth. Take Akiko Busch’s Nine Ways to Cross a River, which is about her experience swimming across nine American waterways, including the Hudson and the Mississippi, each time feeling personally transformed and acquiring a new, visceral understanding of the landscape. Or Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge, about the Great Salt Lake region where she grew up, a geography, McMasters writes, of “fear and comfort,” in which a troubling rise in the lake’s water level was affecting the local humans and birds. In each of these books, people find themselves having a fraught—and dramatic—confrontation with the animals, trees, and land around them. Reading about these titles, I suddenly realized that one of my own favorite books of 2023 did exactly this same thing.Lauren Groff’s novel The Vaster Wilds has stayed with me since I read it earlier this year. The premise of the book sounded almost impossible to pull off: A single character—an unnamed teenage girl—is fleeing the Jamestown colony in the early 1600s after it descends into starvation and cannibalism. She begins running into the American wilderness and never stops, vaguely headed in a direction that she hopes is north, toward the French settlements. She suffers extreme and gnawing hunger, encounters bears, and survives terrifying downpours of sleet. But she also moves closer and closer to a spiritual oneness with the natural world, submitting herself to it, letting herself be enraptured by its beauty.
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S67The Role of Gender Divides in Social Spaces  Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Earlier this week, I sent out some of your descriptions of how you interacted with peers in adolescence. Another batch of those responses is coming. But I wanted to single out one response, from Sam (edited for length and clarity):
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S68A Stubborn Workplace Holiday Tradition  So much can go wrong at a holiday party, but the events are baked into the norms of corporate America.This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
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S69Single mother only daughter | Psyche Films  The heartfelt short documentary Single Mother Only Daughter (2017) offers an intimate window into the relationship between the Los Angeles-based filmmaker Ellie Wen and her mother Fabienne Wen, who lives in Hong Kong. Centred on a phone call the two share after Ellie is in a car accident, their deeply personal conversation draws out the unique challenges that emerged from their dynamic as a single-mother and only-daughter duo. From how the sacrifices of motherhood affected Fabienne, to the impact her depression had on Ellie, no topic is off limits, no matter how difficult.Archival footage from Ellie’s childhood provides glimpses of hers and Fabienne’s shared lives as they dance hand in hand, sing karaoke together and pose in front of a harbour on holiday. These snapshots and home videos of the happy times counterbalance the often challenging conversation that forms the voiceover, drawing out the inherent complexity and difficulties that even the most loving relationships can face. The film’s emotional resonance is grounded in their candidness as they confront difficult feelings with maturity and grace, which bridges the years between them, and highlights how open communication with a loved one can be a powerful antidote to life’s myriad difficulties.
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S70This 'Extremely Rare' Bird Is Half Female, Half Male  The green honeycreeper is only the second of its species ever observed with this conditionâand the first recorded in more than 100 yearsResearchers have spotted an "extremely rare" green honeycreeper in Colombia that's half female and half male. The bird's plumage is divided directly down the middle, with blue feathers typical of males on its right side and the emerald-green feathers of females on its left. This individual is only the second of the species ever recorded exhibiting this traitâcalled bilateral gynandromorphismâand the first in more than 100 years.
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