What If We Never Run Out of Oil?
New technology and a little-known energy source suggest that fossil fuels may not be finite. This would be a miracle—and a nightmare.
May 2013
In This Issue
The world may never run out of oil—and the consequences could be dire. Plus: avoiding the worst parts of death, Henry Kissinger's statesmanship, reconsidering hair metal, and more.
Features
Learning to Live With Fossil Fuels
We can't address climate change without carbon reduction, but we also can't afford to neglect a vital second option: carbon capture.
How Not to Die
Angelo Volandes's low-tech, high-empathy plan to revolutionize end-of-life care
In Defense of Henry Kissinger
He was the 20th century's greatest 19th-century statesman.
The Critics
A short story
Get the digital edition of this issue.
Subscribers can access PDF versions of every issue in The Atlantic archive. When you subscribe, you’ll not only enjoy all of The Atlantic’s writing, past and present; you’ll also be supporting a bright future for our journalism.Dispatches
The Heads of State 
Eduardo Munoz/Reuters Karen vs. Kevin: The Persistence of Pro-Male Gender Bias
A glance at five academic studies
Nishant Choksi How to Tell a Joke on the Internet
The new typography of irony
Akio Suga/EPA/Corbis 
Paul Windle What Makes Us Happy, Revisited
A new look at the famous Harvard study of what makes people thrive
Rogan Ward/Reuters Problem: My Neighbor Is Having Shockingly Loud Sex All the Time
Try blasting recordings of chimpanzees. Our advice columnist to the rescue.
DEA Picture Library/De Agostini/Getty Images How Do You Celebrate the Birthday of a Great Composer Who Inspired Hitler?
Germany grapples with the bicentennial of Richard Wagner's birth.
frog How New York Is Reinventing the Phone Booth
An urban renaissance for public telephones
John Cuneo The Atheist Who Strangled Me
In which Sam Harris teaches me Brazilian jiu-jitsu and explains why violence is like rebirth
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters A Thousand Years of Sex Talk in Arab Culture—in 1 Paragraph
Language doesn't necessarily get less prudish over time.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP Do We Change Our Minds on Abortion When It Affects Us Directly?
Three suggestive stats
Cristiana Couceiro Various Ways You Might Accidentally Get Drunk
We don't always know when we're standing over a large deposit of iron ore.
Jonathon Rosen The Hordes of Microbes Inside Your Body Are Your Friends
An interview with the synthetic biologist Christina Agapakis
The Millennial Stimulus Plan
How young people will supercharge the recovery
Culture File
David Wilson The Hair-Metal Diaries
In a new memoir, the lead singer of Ratt remembers what may be the most forgettable cultural phenomenon of the modern era.
Jack Hughes The Love Life and Cultural Influence of Martin Amis
On the new biography of a literary Lothario
Jerry Korten Bringing Back the Ancient Art of Spearfishing
An old extreme sport is new again.
Richard Mitchell Can a Tuning Fork Improve Your Cocktail?
The theory and practice of serving a drink vibrated, not stirred
Departments
The Conversation
Responses and reverberations
Graham Roumieu The Big Question
What's the most important Supreme Court case no one's ever heard of?
Poetry
Sidereal Elegy
A poem
Two
A poem
