Asterisk is a quarterly journal of clear writing and clear thinking about things that matter. That journal is here. This is our Substack mirror.

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.