STAN HORACZEK
thing that elevated the piece
rather than degraded it.
In many ways, life in 2020 is
not unlike that fractured pottery.
A pandemic-induced global cri-
sis has exposed every fault in our
communities, from the impact
dirty power has on the air qual-
ity of those living in the shadow
of electric plants (page 80) to
a seafood industry that greatly
disadvantages the artisanal
fishermen pulling the world’s din-
ner out of the ocean (page 108).
But each of these fissures is a
reminder that we can do better—
and an opportunity to do so.
How we fix those breaches
shapes our path to a stronger,
safer, healthier, and more eq-
uitable world. Like kintsugi,
these efforts require care and
diligence— not duct tape and
hasty patchwork. Each gleam-
ing gold line we create mends our
communities so that they’re im-
provements on the originals.
That tireless work is what this
issue is all about. And in the 11-
plus years I’ve worked at, with,
or for PopSci, it easily ranks as
one of our most ambitious and
wide-ranging. The stories reach
corners of the globe rarely seen
before in these pages and high-
light efforts to lift up stifled voices.
It explores how, even if we’re faced
with great adversity, we can use
our ingenuity to help humanity
not just survive, but thrive.
This is not a smokescreen—
it’s been a rough year. But it’s also
a season for hope. For PopSci, it’s
a chance to find the steps to what
we know can be a bright, glim-
mering future for all of us.IN JAPAN, THERE’S A
method of repairing shattered
pottery called kintsugi, in which
artisans rejoin shards with gold-
laced epoxy. Once the repair is
complete, the shimmering veins
not only increase the value of the
mended object, they also hold on
to the beauty of its past life as it
continues anew. Kintsugi builds
on the philosophy of wabi- sabi, a
belief that the aesthetic flaws of
age—things like rust, breakage,
and discoloration— enhance an
object’s overall splendor.
Legend holds that the tech-
nique arose in the 15th century,
when a shogun was displeased
with a first attempt at fixing his
favorite tea bowl. Conventional
practices had clumsily joined the
broken pieces with staples, so
he instructed craftsmen to find
a more elegant solution. Some-where we
go from here
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