Tag Archives: Magazines

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – OCTOBER 16, 2026

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘CLASS ACTION’ – Why French students have taken to the streets…


France has been rocked by huge youth protests in recent weeks over the state of high school education, bringing tens of thousands of people on to the streets.

The movement began with outrage over shoddy school conditions in a Paris banlieue, but has spread across the country as pupils voice their anger about a system they say is failing them.

For this week’s big story, Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis hears from protesters who feel abandoned by the French state. Angelique also looks at the evidence on students’ complaints of dilapidated buildings, teacher shortages, inequality and low investment.

Then, Alexander Hurst says fixing the broken education system should be just the start for an aloof political class if it is to finally pay attention to a generation who feel neglected.

Spotlight | The future of the death penalty
Donald Trump has used the full might of the presidency to supercharge executions but, writes Ed Pilkington, an avalanche of mishaps has put the system’s flaws in the spotlight

Science | Sweet time
A flurry of recent studies suggests that spending the first 1,000 days of life under sugar rationing may have left traces on people’s health more than seven decades later. Linda Geddes reports

Feature | The art of dismantling a second world war bomb
British bomb disposal squads are being called to more unexploded devices than ever – and they risk their lives each time. Samira Shackle recounts the challenge they faced when two bombs were discovered on the same day

Opinion | A new era of instability
The latest attack by Houthi rebels on Saudi Arabia may prove to be more calamitous for the region than the world imagines, says Nesrine Malik

Culture | Hungry like the werewolf
Duran Duran talk to Alexis Petridis about 80s excess, tabloid scrutiny and their Halloween glow-up

THE NEW WORLD MAGAZINE – OCTOBER 15, 2026

THE NEW WORLD MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Snuff Politics’ – The very public execution of American values…

Trump’s snuff politics is a new low in American cruelty

The president is using barbaric spectacle as a political weapon – and the damage will go on long after he has gone

Let us call it what it is: snuff politics. In an interview with far right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec posted by streaming channel Real America’s Voice last Thursday, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced the first state-sanctioned public execution in America for 90 years.

Alastair Campbell’s diary: My truly deranged encounter with Trump apologist Kellyanne Conway

The godmother of ‘alternative facts’ assured me the president loved Zelensky – just as he was stabbing him in the back with Putin

I met Kellyanne Conway for the first time last week, when she and I were on a panel together, looking ahead to next month’s US midterm elections. She, you may recall, was the Trump senior aide who, on Term 1 Day 1, as the newly elected US president was falsely claiming more people attended his inauguration than Barack Obama’s, let us know we would have to get used to “alternative facts,” whatever truth photographic or any other evidence might reveal.

Burnham is already winning the new Brexit wars

The shrieks of fury from Johnson, Badenoch, Farage and co speak volumes as the prime minister confronts the disaster they wrought

It’s an old truism in sport and in politics that the best defence is a good attack. That’s certainly something the UK’s leading Brexiteers seem to have taken to heart over the last decade – not least in their relentless fury at anyone who disagrees with their own personal vision for Brexit, or even anyone who just points out that none of them seem to agree on what, exactly, that looks like.

PHILOSOPHY NOW MAGAZINE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2026

PHILOSOPHY NOW MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘THE METAPHYSICS ISSUE’…

METAPHYSICS

Causation: A History

Peter Keeble causes us to think about causation.

‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’

Andrew Brenner tries to make sense of the question.

Classical Indian & Modern Scientific Metaphysics

Mansi Tripathi hosts a trialogue.

The Nature of Reality

Simon Everson says Immanuel Kant can help with quantum mechanics.

What is Metaphysics?

Sajid Bijapure asks what it does, and what it might do in the future.

ARTICLES

Does Feminism Need More Than Liberalism?

Vanessa Yeung considers feminist responses to Rawlsian liberalism.

To Philosophize is to Learn How to Say Goodbye

Scott F. Parker reflects on philosophy as a preparation for death.

When Truth Loses its Witnesses

Mohsen Askari on why not all political narratives should be treated as equal.

In Defence of Hope

Sam Nuttall hopes to defend it with the help of Gabriel Marcel and Ernst Bloch.

Fraudulent Hope?

Alice Figes agrees with Ernst Bloch that hope can build worlds or destroy them, and philosophy’s task is to tell the difference.

Günther Anders (1902-1992)

Clive Webb on how Anders warned humanity about the moral costs of technological progress.

AMERICAN SCIENTIST – NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2026

American Scientist Magazine: The latest issue features ‘Cellular Portraits’ – Detailed sketches helped reveal the function of chromosomes.

The Gene That Changed Cholesterol Treatment

Studies of rare mutations revealed a new way to lower LDL cholesterol—and led to an entirely new class of drugs.

By Philip A. Rea

In the early 2000s, geneticists Helen Hobbs and Jonathan Cohen at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center launched an ambitious effort to investigate cardiovascular health in Dallas County. Their study was unusual for the time. Rather than largely focusing on people of European ancestry, the Dallas Heart Study deliberately recruited a diverse population that reflected the region’s demographics.

QUICK TAKE
  • Rare genetic changes in a gene called PCSK9 help control low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol linked to heart disease.
  • People who naturally make less of the PCSK9 protein have much lower LDL levels, pointing researchers toward new possibilities for lowering cholesterol.
  • That insight led to a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs and showed how studying diverse populations can uncover important clues about disease.

Redrawing the Plague Maps

Ancient genomes are rewriting the history of Yersinia pestis infections across time and space.

By Monica H. Green

I spent much of my childhood in Colorado, which means that I, like millions of others living in the American West, grew up hearing warnings about the dangers of plague. People often find it shocking to learn that Yersinia pestis, the bacterium discovered in 1894 that is believed to have caused the mid-14th-century Black Death and other plague pandemics, is still around and dangerous, but that is one of many misperceptions about plague that need correcting. Plague’s multiple pandemics were not limited to the Black Death nor to Europe. And it is not a disease that disappears simply because no human cases are being reported at epidemic levels. Plague is not a thing of the past, and infections most definitely occur to this day.

QUICK TAKE

For centuries, our understanding of plague was riddled with assumptions based on a few historical accounts and data from modern plague victims.

Advances in genomics and bioarcheology now allow us to tie historical plague pandemics to human remains and even reconstruct the full plague family tree.

These data tell a new, broader story in which plague arrives earlier, stays later, and lurks in rural animal reservoirs before spilling over into human populations.

How Explanation Unlocks Deeper Understanding

The human drive to ask “why” can prompt abstract thinking and aid comprehension.

By Tania Lombrozo

Seeking and evaluating explanations can shape the very process of learning. Just like tasting the soup as you’re cooking can shift the final product toward a closer approximation of soupy perfection, explaining as you learn can change the course of learning itself, pushing you to find a closer approximation of a truly great explanation: one that covers all the relevant observations in the simplest way possible. But how does that work?

QUICK TAKE

The process of explaining is a powerful learning tool.From a young age, humans ask “why”; answering that question can reveal deeper meanings and reveal hidden patterns.

Explaining can unlock abstraction, a complex thought process that allows people to generalize from specific examples to identify common themes.

The need to know why can unlock learning, but it can also drive some people to latch on to patterns that do not exist, such as conspiracy theories.

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE – NOVEMBER 2026 PREVIEW

cover of the November 2026 Atlantic

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE: The latest issue features “BATTLE OF THE GALACTIC OVERLORDS’….

Choose Your Overlord

Musk vs. Bezos

By Josh Tyrangiel

The Adriatic has been crossed by Odysseus and Caesar, by Venetian fleets and Napoleon’s navy, by countless men bent on dominating the world. It has seen its share of courage and folly. But one day in June 2025, off the island of Cres, it witnessed something genuinely new: a man worth $240 billion standing waist-deep in bubbles on the deck of a $500 million yacht, wearing a white bucket hat.

The Great Data-Center Rebellion

Could a new populist movement help save American democracy?

By George Packer

Clinton, Iowa, is topographically flat and economically declining. The sawmills that made the city rich in the late 19th century have been repurposed as a museum. One of the Victorian mansions long since abandoned by the old lumber barons is open for tours, but tourists are scarce. Clinton has shrunk to about 24,000 people, and the town center, along the Mississippi River, feels nearly empty. On the west side, miles of deep-green corn and soy fields are crisscrossed with transmission wires and zoned for heavy industrial use. The city’s economic activity includes corn processing, pet-food production, and methamphetamines. With available land and a dire need for investment, Clinton seems like the perfect place for a gigantic data center.

The Baltic States Prepare for War

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are readying themselves to fend off a Russian attack—with the help of the United States, or without it.

By Isaac Stanley-Becker

ne evening this summer, in the village of Bezdonys, in eastern Lithuania, I watched as a platoon of riflemen arrived at a train station occupied by enemy forces. Some of the Lithuanians let out a burst of gunfire from across the tracks, pinning the adversary in place as the rest of the unit advanced on the station. As the firefight intensified, wounded riflemen were evacuated to makeshift medical tents. An enemy soldier lay slumped against the station’s yellow clapboard siding.

THE NATION MAGAZINE – NOVEMBER 2026 PREVIEW

THE NATION MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘(Mis)Adventures in the MANOSPHERE’ – Rebecca Solnit explores an America where the right has turned hatred of women into an ever-expanding multi-platform internet grift.

Rebecca Solnit’s (Mis)Adventures in the Manosphere

Rebecca Solnit explores an America where the right has turned hatred of women into an ever-expanding, multi-platform Internet grift. Rebecca Solnit

The People vs. the Supreme Court

This term the Supreme Court has plans to trample even more of our rights. But we, the people, are not powerless in the face of their power grab. Elie Mystal

Why Democratic Leaders Keep Waging War on the Young

The party’s silver-haired establishment is caught up in an existential culture war. Elizabeth Spiers

ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY – FALL 2026

ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY QUARTERLY MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘The Promise of Organized Knowledge’ – Canada and Europe chart new paths for AI Science’s small-world network; Questions for science’s social contract; Blasting people to the Moon….

The Promise of Organized Knowledge

The Fall 2026 issue explores how artificial intelligence might affect public policy in a variety of domains. Take biosecurity: Despite the fear that AI could be used to engineer dangerous pathogens, a former FBI special agent argues that the technology can also be used to uncover suspicious activity and possible bad actors before they become a threat. On economic policy: Spectacular wealth from AI will accrue to relatively few companies and individuals. What if a country were to create an AI sovereign wealth fund to distribute these profits more equitably? A group of Canadian scholars and legislators proposes to set up just such a fund. And when it comes to trust, a cultural anthropologist argues that CERN, the world’s most successful large-scale science collaboration, has many lessons to offer European regulators about how to build trust and transparency when using AI for science.

What Are the Goals for AI?

In “Escaping AI’s Measurement Trap” (Issues, Summer 2026), Urs Gasser, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and Fabienne Marco make a compelling case that governance of artificial intelligence faces a problem. Once benchmarks become targets, systems and their developers adapt to them, and measured performance may increasingly diverge from behavior in the real world. Their argument leads to a broader question: How can democratic societies not only improve the oversight of increasingly optimized AI systems, but shape what gets optimized in the first place?

A DISCUSSION OF

Escaping AI’s Measurement Trap

By Urs Gasser, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Fabienne Marco

Read Responses From

Biosecurity for the Age of AI

By Edward You

There is much discussion on how artificial intelligence poses threats to biosecurity; there should be at least as much focus on how AI can expand the solutions.

Today’s biosecurity approach is still grounded in a foundation laid nearly two decades ago. In 2008, when I reported to Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters as a newly minted supervisory special agent to support biosecurity policy, one important, emerging question was how providers of synthetic DNA should screen orders from customers. As commercial gene synthesis became increasingly accessible, many people worried that individuals could order genetic sequences coding for toxins and pathogens and then use them to cause harm.

CITY JOURNAL MAGAZINE – AUTUMN 2026 PREVIEW

CITY JOURNAL MAGAZINE: The latest issue surveys pivotal shifts across American technology, governance, and culture, featuring essays on the nuclear energy revival, the impacts of federal civil service cuts, municipal socialism in Chicago, and ideological conflicts in the arts and healthcare.

DEI in Medicine Hurts Black Patients Most

Protocols that regard metrics like BMI as racist or refuse to report drug use in pregnant women are not medically sound.

The Left’s War on Gig

Costly labor mandates are hurting the very workers they’re supposed to help.

Britain’s Crisis of Governance

Small groups of motivated ideologues have imposed their views on a hostile populace.

David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Scroll

The novelist’s 1990s vision of entertainment as addiction is more relevant than ever.

Missionaries to the Jobless

Mormon employment counseling offers everything from resumé writing and networking to moral support and

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – OCTOBER 19, 2026 PREVIEW

The cover for the October 19 2026 issue of The New Yorker which features a person wearing a colorful patterned sweater...

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest issue cover features Malika Favre’s “Sweater Weather” – Comfortable patterns.

Donald Trump After the Midterms

If the coming election does result in a blue wave, Trump will be faced with the fact of his diminishment. The rest of us will be faced with the wreckage. By David Remnick

We’re Learning to Live with Waymos. It’s Going Weird

A view from the back seat. By Molly Fischer

Kash Patel’s Slap Shot

The F.B.I. director’s hockey team, the Dons, faced their rivals in a beer league. With rogue slap shots and hovering security agents, Patel was in the zone—or, at least, next to it. By Richie McGinniss

My Education on the Border of the Syrian War

In the last Turkish town on the road to Aleppo, jihadis and spies mixed with reporters trying to prove themselves. By Ben Taub

PROTEAN MAGAZINE PREVIEW – FALL 2026

PROTEAN MAGAZINE: The latest issue features a critique of the University of California’s institutional history, an interview exploring the life and politics of John Berger, an excerpt celebrating historical Palestinian revolutionary resistance literature, a poignant reflection honoring a murdered Palestinian community advocate, Palestinian poetry confronting immense grief with unyielding, steadfast resilience, and verses examining how modern capitalism structures contemporary family forms.

Institutional Optimism

Scholar, author, and activist Tony Platt reviews the new narrative history by Miriam Pawel, “California Dreams: The Making and Remaking of the University of California.” Pawel’s narrow focus on five high-achieving alumni, argues Platt, elides both radical traditions and unethical…

Mawwal

Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “Mawwal” confronts immeasurable grief with unbending steadfastness: “the stabs of daggers I prefer / to being ruled by the vile.”

I lost a beautiful dream,
I lost the scent of the lilies,
and my night was long,
upon the fences of gardens…
But I never lost my way!
The palm of my hand
is now accustomed to the wounds of hope.
Shake my hand hard
and a river of songs will flow forth.
Mother of my colt and sword:
Mother mine, here’s a ditty of love!
Mother mine, a ditty!
The stabs of daggers I prefer,
to being ruled by the vile.

Tom Overton on John Berger: From Life

Andrew Holter interviewed Tom Overton, author of a new biography, “John Berger: From Life,” out from Verso Books. In this fascinating discussion, Overton discusses his friendship with Berger, the biography’s literary approach, Berger on Palestine, and future plans for scholarship…