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Chapter one
Opening Lines


The Big Bang Is Hard Science. It Is Also a Creation Story.
Even with its explanatory power, Big Bang theory takes its place in a long line of myths.

To Understand Religion, Think Football
Sacred beliefs likely arose out of prehistoric bonding and rituals.

The Unique Merger That Made You (and Ewe, and Yew)
All sophisticated life on the planet Earth may owe its existence to one freakish event.
Chapter two
Beginning of the End

The Original Natural Born Killers
In the 1920s, two murderers were defended by science. The infamous case still echoes.

At Death’s Door, He Was Put on Ice
How a new technology is resurrecting patients from what was once certain death.

How World of Warcraft Might Help Head Off the Next Pandemic
Gamers are giving scientists insights into how people react to a plague.

A Deadly Virus Is Arrested in the Middle East
Halting a MERS pandemic may hold lessons for the Ebola crisis—until the next outbreak.
Chapter three
Life Finds a Way

In Search of Life’s Smoking Gun
A journey to the underwater volcanoes where life may have erupted.

The Family That Couldn’t Say Hippopotamus
The origins of language are not what inherited disorders seemed to suggest.

How a Zebra Mussel Convinced Me To Get a Vasectomy
“It’s amazing what we let our teachers teach us.”

The Greatest Animal War
Competition in Cambrian seas helped cause an explosion in diversity.
Chapter four
Out of Nowhere

Digging Through the World’s Oldest Graveyard
In Ethiopia, paleontologists are pushing back the clock on humanity’s origins.

The Wild, Secret Life of New York City
Get back to nature, right in your own neighborhood.

Why We Keep Playing the Lottery
Blind to the mathematical odds, we fall to the marketing gods.

Ingenious: Paul J. Steinhardt
The Princeton physicist on what’s wrong with inflation theory and his view of the Big Bang.
Chapter five
The Fall 2014 Quarterly

The Distant Future, 30 Years On
The Fall 2014 Quarterly looks ahead.

Nature, Pixelated
With our brains plugged into virtual worlds all day, what is real?

The Last Word with Diane Ackerman
Magnifying our mutant, turbulent, symmetrical natures.

How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math
Sorry, education reformers, it’s still memorization and repetition we need.

The Book No One Read
Why Stanislaw Lem’s futurism deserves attention.
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“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.” —Jules Verne
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