4 ILLUSTRATION BY BIJOU KARMANThe tech team took to the
annals as well, with a retrospective
of some of the modern era’s most
epic innovations: products that
have barely changed since they
first rocked the world. Wonder
Bread even sent us a loaf just for
the photo shoot on page 71. It’s the
most ideal specimen the company
could pop out of the oven, care-
fully packed and rush- shipped to
our offices. The resulting picture
does not disappoint.
Hopefully you’ll notice that the
issue itself is a bit of a new be-
ginning for us. The design staff
spiffed up our appearance, and the
result is a stunner, retaining our
classic quarterly bones but with
fresh layers of modern muscle.
The redesign is more than an
aesthetic overhaul; we added
a new section called Big Qs to
the front of the magazine. It’s a
delightful repository of head-
scratchers that resolve into ohhhh!
moments. Is there a scientific rea-
son that humans cling to the past?
Check out page 26 to find out.
You might expect a magazine
full of origin stories to feel like a
history lesson, but that wasn’t the
intention and it’s not the result. We
look back in time, yes, but more as
a marker for where we stand onIN MY FIRST CRACK AT THIS
note, I invoked Popular Science’s
inaugural editor’s letter, written in- It was a pretty good idea, and
my draft was going well, but about
two paragraphs in, I scrapped it. I
realized we have a 150th birthday
coming up, so I’ll wait till 2022 to
mine that vein of sentiment.
Why share this insight into my
creative process? Because this is-
sue is about origins, and that’s how
I got this thing rolling. Giddyup.
You might notice that we look
to the past more than usual in this
edition, but hey, that’s where the
origin stories are. Hundreds of
thousands of years ago, for exam-
ple, the symbiotic bond between
humans and dogs formed. While
conventional wisdom goes that
we domesticated the Canis famil-
iaris, new evidence indicates that
they actually tamed themselves.
Kat McGowan came through with
a helluva tale about this unique
relationship on page 94.
to beginnings:
new and old
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