About
Asterisk is a quarterly journal of clear writing and clear thinking about things that matter.
We are:
Probabilistic. We can't be absolutely sure of anything – especially the world’s hardest and most complicated problems. It’s our job to wade through conflicting evidence and limited data, do the best we can to find the truth, and be honest about the uncertainty that remains.
Transparent. We care less about telling our readers what we think than showing them why we think it.
Obsessively curious. Our favorite question is “wait – but why?” Asterisk is by and for the kind of people who aren’t satisfied until they’ve tested their assumptions and chased every claim back to its source. (Our team is pedantic, and proud of it). We’re constantly noticing things in the world that surprise and confuse us, and we won’t stop until we understand them.
Ready to treat our readers like adults. A key question for any media outlet is: what do you do when the truth might undermine public health advice or encourage risky decisions? At Asterisk, the answer is: tell it. We believe that the truth, whatever it is, is less dangerous than lying, and we trust our readers to approach big questions with nuance and clarity.
Open to all perspectives. Our editorial perspective is shaped by the philosophy of Effective Altruism, but not limited to it.
Excited. We believe the future is going to be very big and very strange. We can’t wait to get there. In the meantime, we're trying to see what it might look like.
Terrified. We think that technologies developed in the next century will place humanity at unprecedented risk of destroying itself. Asterisk is a place to talk about how we can make it to 2100.
Masthead
Editor in Chief
Clara Collier
Managing Editor
Jake Eaton
Copy Editors
Peter Kranitz, James Hu, Jenna Portnoff, Adrienne Smith, Devon Balwit
Fact Checkers
Dale Brauner, Matt Mahoney, Laura Casey, David Mather
Design
Sarah Gephart / MGMT.
Web
Marie Otsuka, Minkyoung Kim / MK + MO
Submissions
We’re always looking for new contributors. If you’re interested in writing for us, please send a short summary of your piece to submissions@asteriskmag.com.
Contact
About Highlights
By highlighting text and “starring” your selection, you can create a personal marker to a passage.
What you save is stored only on your specific browser locally, and is never sent to the server. Other visitors will not see your highlights, and you will not see your previously saved highlights when visiting the site through a different browser.
To add a highlight: after selecting a passage, click the star 
. It will add a quick-access bookmark.
To remove a highlight: after hovering over a previously saved highlight, click the cross 
. It will remove the bookmark.
To remove all saved highlights throughout the site, you can click here to completely clear your cache. All selections have been cleared.
Asterisk is published by Obelus, Inc., a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 92-2954169). We are supported by a grant from the Open Philanthropy Project.
Contents © Asterisk Magazine and the authors and artists. All rights in the magazine reserved by Asterisk, and rights in the works contained herein retained by their owners. All views represented are those of the Asterisk editorial staff, especially where they contradict each other.