Long before the search for a COVID-19 vaccine, the visionary, Hungarian-born biochemist Katalin Karikó knew that an ephemeral and underappreciated molecule called messenger RNA could change the world. Karikó worked for more than three decades at her lab bench, in the single-minded pursuit of a breakthrough that would confirm her hunch: that mRNA could transform ordinary cells into tiny factories

Contributed by Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future “I’m a realist,” Ruth Gates was saying. “I cannot continue to hope that our planet is not going to change radically. It already is changed.” Gates, then the head of Hawaii’s Institute of Marine Biology, had taken me out to

Dr. Paul Farmer, medical anthropologist, physician, and professor at Harvard Medical School, passed away on February 21, 2022, in Butaro, Rwanda. Dr. Farmer was the subject of Tracy Kidder’s 2003 book Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. The book is an account of the difference

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells was an instant bestseller when it was published in 2019, and its messages about the threat of global warming have only become more relevant in the proceeding two years. In this video, the author looks at possible side-effects of our changing climate, and offers hope for what we can do to mitigate

Jamil Zaki, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and author of The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, joined Penguin Random House Education and the National Orientation Directors Association (NODA) at their annual conference, held virtually this October, to speak about the psychology behind empathy. Based on 15 years of research, he

Bren Smith, author of Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change and executive director of Greenwave gives an inside view of the process of ocean farming and its potential to save the planet in two informative videos. In “This Incredible underwater farm could be the future of food” produced

Auburn University has chosen The Circle by Dave Eggers as their 2017 Common Book. Auburn is the 26th college or university to select The Circle for their common reads program. This novel, which is soon to be a major motion picture, follows idealistic Mae Holland after she is hired to work for the world’s most powerful

Twitter has become a stage for constant artificial high drama, where every day a new person emerges as either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain.