This Week’s Issue: Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?

Plus: the app young people are using to repurpose reality, and a pathbreaking surgeon who operates by remote control. View in browser | Update your preferences A Reporter at Large Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change? Eating meat creates huge environmental costs. Impossible Foods thinks it has a solution. By Tad Friend Brave New World Dept. How TikTok Holds Our Attention On the popular short-video app, young people are churning through images and sounds at warp speed, repurposing reality into ironic, bite-size content. By Jia Tolentino Annals of Medicine Paging Dr. Robot A pathbreaking surgeon prefers to do his cutting by remote control. By D. T. Max A Critic at Large The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism Big technological shifts have always empowered reformers. They have also empowered bigots, hucksters, and propagandists. By Andrew Marantz Books Is Meritocracy Making Everyone Miserable? In a renewed debate over élite higher education, the question is whether the system is broken or the whole idea was a terrible mistake. By Louis Menand Personal History Four Years in Startups Life in Silicon Valley during the dawn of the unicorns. By Anna Wiener Comment Summits, Strikes, and Climate Change There are positive signs that the politics of climate change are shifting in America. And giving up isn’t really an option. By Elizabeth Kolbert PAID POST A Pulitzer Prize winner takes on the history of Constitutional equality “How are voter suppression, mass incarceration, and jeopardy to the American-born children of undocumented immigrants possible in the land of the free? Eric Foner [illuminates with] his masterful knowledge.” —Martha Minow, author of In Brown’s Wake Humor from The New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs Running with Scissors They say that bad things will happen if you do this, but that hasn’t been my experience. By Colin Stokes Cartoons From The Issue Cartoons from the Issue Drawings and drollery from this week’s magazine. Sign up for more newsletters from The New Yorker. Visit The New Yorker shop. Question about your subscription? Contact Customer Care. New Yorker digital subscribers get unlimited access to everything on newyorker.com. Log in to your account here. We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please send your thoughts and suggestions to TNYinbox@newyorker.com. This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, NewYorker@newsletters.newyorker.com, to your address book. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2019. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.