Mind/Body Issue

By Richard Stengel, Managing Editor

Science happens every day. Long before there was politics or economics or global affairs, science ran the show. In-depth science coverage is part of the DNA of TIME, and we've been at it a while, starting with our cover story on physician and Nobel laureate Sir Frederick Grant Banting, in our Aug. 27, 1923, issue, in the first year of the magazine's existence.

In the decades since, we've put writing and reporting about science at the heart of our editorial mission, bringing generations of readers news on such sweeping stories as the hunt for a polio vaccine, the race to the moon, the study of human origins, the battle against AIDS, the birth of the environmental movement and the crisis of global warming. In the past year, we've frequently looked at science through the increasingly revealing lens of evolutionary biology, exploring what makes us good and evil, the secrets of birth order and why we always seem to worry about the wrong things.

This week's cover package, the Science of Romance, our annual Mind/Body special section, continues that tradition of digging into complicated areas that reveal not only rich science but science that relates to our readers in meaningful ways. The main story was written and the entire package was edited by TIME science editor Jeffrey Kluger. Co-author of Apollo 13 (which served as the basis for the 1995 movie) and the author of five other books, including the upcoming Simplexity, about the beautiful simplicity and complexity of everything around us, Kluger has been with TIME for 12 years and has written more than two dozen cover stories.

The team that produced this package includes writers, reporters and editors Carolyn Sayre, Tiffany Sharples, Kate Stinchfield, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, Belinda Luscombe, John Cloud and Richard Corliss. The look of the package is the handiwork of associate art director Chrissy Dunleavy and photo editor Crary Pullen. Authors Carl Zimmer, Lori Oliwenstein and Steven Pinker also contributed stories.

In the year--and years--to come, science coverage will continue to be part of the core of what we do. Look for our Mind/Body issue every year around this time, as well as our annual environmental issue in the spring, our fitness issue in June and our year-in-medicine wrap-up in the fall. And, of course, whenever science happens--which is to say all the time--you can find it here and on Time.com

Richard Stengel, MANAGING EDITOR