The Conversation - Science faves: Yours and ours

If The Conversation is ever transformed into a quiz show, our science and technology desk is a lock to provide the questions for the “Potpourri” category.

Based on the stories that most engaged our readers this year, you might agree. Your favorites of 2024 ranged from self-medicating animals in antiquity to a check-in on drones in the war in Ukraine. Also popular were an explainer on how winter temps challenge rechargeable batteries and a history of the various ways people have defined biological sex over the past 150 years. I did say they ranged!

Our best articles help satisfy your curiosity about the world – maybe even answering questions you didn’t know you had. We cover new discoveries and inventions and how they intersect with people and society. It can sometimes feel like we cover everything under the Sun – including the Sun.

In that spirit, each science and tech editor selected one of our own favorite articles of the year. They probe questions as big as building in space and as personal as a bad feeling, as existential as life after death and as useful as advice about AI search features.

Thanks for reading in 2024. We’ll be back to explore more questions from the wide world of “Potpourri” in the new year.

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