Explore the best from the March issue of WIRED

From Facebook to Crispr, here are the highlights of the most recent issue of WIRED magazine. [View this email in your browser]( [logo]( [[WIRED Magazine]2.28.18]( When we put together an issue of the print magazine, we try to choose a mix of deeply reported features and stories that resonate at the moment. Finding a great mix is often tough. But for our March issue, it wasn’t. For the past many months, Facebook has been at the center of national attention—and not in a good way. [Our March cover story]( is a big, deeply reported article that answers how and why that happened. [Nicholas Thompson]( our editor in chief, and [Fred Vogelstein]( a longtime Silicon Valley reporter (and the author of Dogfight, about the bitter rivalry between Google and Apple), spent months interviewing dozens of people close to Facebook. If you haven’t read it yet, the story provides the crucial backstory to Facebook’s role as a disseminator of fakery and Russian infiltration. We also asked [James Vlahos]( to write the inside story of one of the most audacious technological moonshots today: Amazon's quest, through something called the Alexa Prize, to build a talking bot that can actually hold a normal conversation—and tell decent jokes. Vlahos spent months following the finalists around the world until, at the end of last year, Amazon announced the winners. Find out who they were—and who won—[here.]( Soon, the long-awaited film adaptation of the book A Wrinkle in Time will open in theaters. Last year, WIRED culture writer [Angela Watercutter]( visited director [Ava DuVernay]( on the film’s set in northern California. DuVernay is known for championing a more inclusive future, especially in Hollywood, and Watercutter explains why this film, with DuVernay at the helm, is perfect for the moment. To read her story, [go here.]( [Crispr technology]( is fast changing how we think about biology. Now that includes [how to deal with invasive species](. Traditionally, the only way to rid islands of invasive species has been with the brutal and dangerous methods of poisoning or shooting the unwanted animals. Environmental writer [Emma Marris]( traveled to the Galapagos, and then Australia, to learn about another potential way: genetically engineering a mouse (and then a rat) that will breed itself into oblivion. In her story [“Process of Elimination,”]( Marris explores the way that genetic technology could solve an environmental crisis—while possibly unleashing changes on ecosystems in unintended and unstoppable ways. Finally, our March issue also includes the tragic story of [Kim Wall](. Last August, Wall, a freelance journalist, was in Copenhagen, looking into a story about a man named Peter Madsen who was building a do-it-yourself space rocket. Years earlier, Madsen had built a DIY submarine that, in turn, spurred interest from filmmakers, book writers, and journalists all over the world. When Wall reached out to Madsen, he invited her to take a ride on the famous submarine. She never returned. When Wall’s close friend and fellow journalist May Jeong learned that Kim was dead, her instinct was to find out everything she could about what happened. “I could say that I was trying to control grief by examining the source of that pain,” Jeong writes, “but that would be reasoning in hindsight. All I knew was that it was painful to think about Kim, and it pained me just a little less to try to report about Madsen.” You can read Jeong’s beautiful essay about her friend, [here](. Maria Streshinsky, Executive Editor, WIRED Move Fast Inside the Two Years That Shook Facebook—and the World By Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein How a confused, defensive social media giant steered itself into a disaster, and how Mark Zuckerberg is trying to fix it all. Fighting Words Amazon's Battle to Bring Conversational AI Into Your Home By James Vlahos Amazon is staging a contest called the Alexa Prize—a mad dash toward an outlandish goal: Cook up a bot capable of small talk. Sci-Fi How Ava DuVernay Became a Creator of Worlds By Angela Watercutter With A Wrinkle in Time, the director merges sci-fi’s embrace of the Other with her own vision for a better, more inclusive future. [advertisement]( [Powered by LiveIntent]( [Ad Choices]( [WIRED Magazine Subscription] Get Wired The future is already here. Try 3 months of WIRED free. START YOUR TRIAL. Gene Editing Crispr Will Transform the Way We Eradicate Invasive Species By Emma Marris Some conservationists want to use gene editing to eliminate island predators. It's not brutal like poison, but it could revolutionize our power over nature. Longread The Final, Terrible Voyage of the Nautilus By May Jeong Kim Wall went for a ride on a submarine, hoping to write a story about a maker of "extreme machines." She never did. Writer May Jeong needed to know why. [advertisement]( [Powered by LiveIntent]( [AdChoices]( [WIRED Magazine]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Pinterest]( [Youtube]( [Instagram]( This e-mail was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, [wired@newsletters.wired.com]( to your address book. View our [Privacy Policy]( [Unsubscribe]( Copyright © Condé Nast 2018. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.