Daniel Kolitz

The problem with having skin is that it’s not blemishless and can burn very badly and is liable to develop rashes or sores, not to mention cancers, and — at once more benign and, in the moment, just as miserable as...

This week’s question — could the world ever run entirely on renewable energy? — is shadowed by a much larger one: Namely, will politicians and powerful forces of delay like Big Oil ever allow the world to run...

If you would like to know what it feels like to die, while at the same time continuing to live, you have a number of solid options. You can eat fast food quickly on a 90-degree day; you can lay awake all night mentally...

Bodies are machines designed to remind you of death, to semi-continuously blare out the fact of your mortality, warning of the end with each ache, wrinkle, and — especially — lost strand of hair. One day you have a...

Scientists, or at least their wild-haired fictional counterparts, promised us time travel and still have not delivered. Forget walking with dinosaurs or killing baby Hitler; I’d be happy just to warn my month-ago self...

It is easy to be pessimistic about the future. It is also easy to scientifically verify that pessimism through persuasive papers and charts. It is easier still to lose yourself in bleak visions of fires and floods, food...

Earlier this month, a kind of chirping, rainforest-y sound sprung up in my apartment. It came from my roommate’s room. At first, I took it for a video game, but then realised the sound materialised even when my...

Among the recreational drugs currently entering the psychiatric mainstream (MDMA, LSD, etc.), ketamine is something of an outlier. Most people have a rough idea of what “acid” or “molly” are supposed to do, even...

An entire industry – with its own spokespeople, podcasts, best-sellers, retreats, truisms, etc. – has sprung up around sleep. Give or take a contrarian or two, the message of most of this stuff seems to be that...

It’s easy to attribute omnipotence to one’s devices. I’d hate to know what my iPhone knows about me. That said, there are still aspects of existence that Silicon Valley has yet to quantify (though not, I’m sure,...

Earlier this year, a research team made waves by suggesting that we should disseminate Earth’s microbes on Mars in a preemptive effort to foster a climate hospitable to human life. To the “anti-contamination”...

Spend enough time desperately googling cures for “brain fog” and “pathological procrastination” and you’re likely to come across all kinds of things — YouTube videos in which bodybuilders beg you to take...

Every life-stage has its share of novelty – first kiss, first tax return, first twinge of certain death – but when it comes to new experiences most of us peak in infancy. Just laying there, gargling and soiling our...

To be alive is to feel fucking terrible, if not all then at least some of the time. Headaches, nausea, mysterious aches and pains — all conspire to make our short time on Earth something less than a nonstop...

When you’re a journalist or club promoter or financier, fraud is always a gamble — you might be publicly disgraced and have your venal misdeeds replayed over and over in Netflix documentaries and prestige podcasts,...

People say other people’s dreams are boring, but what if the problem is technology? As a sense-conveying device, human speech is subpar, prone to gaps, stutters and falsifications, intentional or otherwise. If you...

Perhaps there is a world, in a distant galaxy, where I am being paid $S6,000 a word to write this introduction. In that world, I’d almost certainly feel compelled to make it as long as possible — to ruminate at...

There is technically no law against doing nothing while millions suffer and hundreds of thousands die from a disease it is in your power to curtail. No one’s going to arrest you for ensuring scores of needless deaths...

The human tolerance for sound is, on a galactic level, puny. Volcano eruptions, jackhammer-intensive construction work, My Bloody Valentine concerts ” these tinnitus-inducing phenomena are barely whispers besides the...

Today, when you see an eerie child lift a toy with its mind in some hackneyed ‘80s-horror homage, you can be reasonably certain that kid is supposed to be special in some way. A hundred years from now, that might not...

What’s worse: a future in which the robots turn against us or a future filled with robot stand-up comedians? Regular stand-up comedians are bad enough; I don’t need a robot asking me to go to their standup show all...