Global hunger finally back on its downward march
World hunger is back on a downward trend, after progress began stalling in the 2010s then actually worsened around the pandemic. The number of undernourished people has dropped year by year since 2022, after first stalling upward around the pandemic. The share globally fell to 7.8 percent in 2025, from 8.1 percent in 2024, and…
The rest of the wildfire story
Yes, Europe has seen wildfires in France and Spain this summer on a historic scale, with hundreds of thousands of evacuations. Yes, the Midwest and Atlantic regions of the US have been throttled with smoke from vast fires in Canada. And yes, climate change is a factor in creating the conditions for these fires. El…
Dementia: rise and fall
If the fear and burden of dementia feel ever more present in recent years, you haven’t lost your mind. The number of dementia cases around the world has risen roughly two and a half times since 1990. But that’s not the story here. Consider that the number of people over the age of 80 has…
The global prosperity gap is shrinking
Billionaires by the dozen and, at least briefly, one trillionaire have drawn a lot of public attention in this country lately and become symbols of economic inequality. But take a step back for a global take. Equality has been on a powerful upswing for two generations now. The rise in incomes, wealth, and a share in…
Will AI divide us further? Maybe not.
Those of us who consult Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT — which by now is almost all of us — know that our artificial consultants and coaches are tirelessly agreeable. They’re programmed sycophants, trained to please and take our cues as they answer our questions and respond to our prompts. Is this a setup for digging…
It’s been 250 years. We’ve changed.
Philadelphia was the biggest city, at 30,000. New York City had about 25,000. Today those would be towns just big enough to support one medium-size high school. Most Americans were self-employed farmers, and their world was powered by muscle – human and animal – with some added boost from firewood and water power. Today, one…
Lights coming on across Africa
Just since 2024, electrical service has reached the homes of 50 million more Africans across 40 countries. Electricity is fundamental to every aspect of modern life from refrigerating food to reading after dark to running drip irrigation systems to connecting to the whole information age economy. Not to mention living in smoke-free houses. It’s the…
We’re all richer, but compared to whom?
A little over a week ago, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire. That’s a net worth equal to about 3 percent of the current US GDP. For comparison, the leading figure of the Gilded Age, John D. Rockefeller, was worth about 1.5 percent of total national output. So Musk has become an avatar, a…
The woods are not lost
The world’s forests are increasingly holding their own these days. Forests matter. They shelter wildlife, cool the air, protect watersheds, provide lumber, offer beauty and natural settings, and – not least – extract carbon from the atmosphere. Deforestation in Brazil has dropped to the lowest levels since 2012–2014, its previous low and a small fraction…
Dads are picking up more child care – and feeling good about it
Bit by bit, men are remodeling their role in the family. Women continue to shoulder most of the labor on the home front. But since the pandemic, men have markedly shifted their behavior in ways that appear to be enduring. College-educated fathers in the US have cut an average of six hours per week at paid…