Persistent Organic Pollutants: you don’t need a Ph.D. in chemistry to recognize realize they are dangerous. But Dr. Rainer Lohmann has been studying POPs for some time and their danger to the environment and human beings.

The year began with chaos in the U.S. House of Representatives and ended much the same. Along the way, we saw technology demonstrate its potential to reshape human productivity and creativity; we have seen wars and violence; and we have worried aloud about the health of American Democracy. Dr. Evelyn Farkas helps us take stock of all of that and name our 2023 “Story of the Year.”

From the violence in the Middle East to the dysfunction in Congress, the world feels increasingly untethered. Tom Nichols spent his early career analyzing threats to American security and now is unapologetic in his warnings about the threats to American democracy.

Coming of age has long been the subject of scholarship and great storytelling. Nikhil Goyal combines both in a study that shines a light on the lived experience of young people making the transition from childhood to adulthood while living in poverty.

Not so long ago, Facebook was the unrivaled social media platform, reaching billions of users on a regular basis and selling a vision of itself as a new public square. Jeff Horwitz broke the original story of the way Facebook executives prioritized engagement on its platform over protecting things like American democracy.

The elements of a scary story might be exotic, super-natural, or even mundane. Tananarive Due weaves all of those things together in an ethereal world of her creation to explore the violence of the Jim Crow South.

Everyone faces challenges in life, but when those challenges are born of trauma, the challenge to persevere becomes more daunting. Dr. Jonathan DePierro discusses the science of resilience and how we can all thrive in the wake of adversity.

The transition from childhood to adulthood ushers in a wide variety of difficult questions like who actually loves us, and why. Nyani Nkrumah explores those coming-of-age themes, as well as issues of race, identity, trauma, and who is responsible for the person we actually are.

For too long, the history we’ve considered “America’s” has really just been the history of European conquest. Ned Blackhawk argues that there is no American history without its first, indigenous inhabitants.