UnDisciplined

Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University, has spent her career studying the landscapes of other worlds — and for decades, that work has depended on images and data sent back by robotic missions. Now, as humans re-enter deep space, she’s asking a different question: What changes when we see these worlds with our own eyes?

This winter’s snow drought may leave a mark that lasts for centuries. Justin DeRose, a dendrochronologist and assistant professor of silviculture and applied forest ecology at Utah State University, says trees across the West are already recording the story of climate in their rings — wet years, dry years, fire years, and sometimes years so harsh they leave almost no growth at all. And as drought years begin stacking up closer and closer together, those forests may be telling us something important about how fast the West is changing.

For years, many people have assumed that climate change will send massive waves of “climate refugees” across borders around the world. But Jan Freihardt, a political scientist at ETH Zurich, says the reality is far more complicated. Studying communities along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh—where floods and erosion regularly destroy homes and farmland—Freihardt has followed families trying to decide whether to stay, move a little, or start over somewhere else. Distant migration is the option of last resort — and often not an option at all.

In 2011, an EF-5 tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri, claiming 161 lives. Almost immediately researchers like Marc Levitan, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, began working to understand why it was so devastating. The results of that investigation are now being implemented into building codes around the world. And the result is that we’re more ready for the next huge twister.

Is the greatest existential threat our species has ever faced really something to joke about? Aaron Sachs thinks so. And, in fact, he thinks that, in many cases, we’re not joking about it enough.

We’ve long found different ways to explain that the world is made up of haves and have-nots. We live in the developed world or the developing world. There are those who are advantaged and those who are disadvantaged. And then, of course, there’s the one percent and everyone else. But under global warming, the climate journalist Jeff Goodell thinks, there may be a new way of describing this dichotomy: The cooled and the cooked.

For a very long time it was thought that some alcohol, in moderation, could be healthy for us. The latest research suggests that’s simply not true. This certainly doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be allowed to drink — but we should at least know why we drink as much as we do. And that’s a question that Dr. Charles Knowles has tried to resolve in his new book.

Ten years after publishing This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, activist and writer Ashton Applewhite reflects on what a decade of living inside her own argument has taught her about aging, identity, and the quiet power of adaptation.

We know that, throughout history, society hasn’t always appreciated revolutionary scientific findings — and sometimes scientists find themselves under attack. But it turns out that, for hundreds of years and still today, some of the biggest attackers are fellow scientists.

Historically, an “everyone is a VIP” philosophy made good business sense for Disney amusement parks. But now Disney is embracing tiered services. Daniel Currell explains why and what’s to come.