The Difficult Case for Assisted Plant Migration By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight To protect them from climate change, concerned citizens are moving clones of California’s ancient sequoias to Oregon in a process known as assisted migration, but should they?
What the Death of a Glacier Means for Us By Aaron Gilbreath Commentary The death of an iconic California glacier signals the loss of one scientist’s work, the end of an epoch, and possibly the beginning of a new era of mass extinction.
Against Hustle: Jenny Odell Is Taking Her Time at the End of the World By Rebecca McCarthy Feature The attention economy is killing us and the planet. Artist and writer Jenny Odell talks about why slowing down could be the only way to survive.
The Curious Tale of the Salish Sea Feet By Kea Krause Feature To date, 21 disembodied feet have washed up on the shores of Seattle’s Salish Sea. What at first looked like the work of a serial killer turned out to be something even more unsettling: A message from the ocean about who we are.
When the Climate Change Story Becomes Your Life Story By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Moving from bustling, expensive Seattle to tiny Ashland, Oregon seemed like an improvement, until the forest fire season began.
Namwali Serpell on Doing the Responsible Thing — Writing an Irresponsible Novel By Tobias Carroll Feature “I joke that this is the great Zambian novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.”
The Terror of Being Awake By Michelle Weber Highlight “I thought, ‘This is it, this is how I’m going to die, right here on the table, and my family will never know what my last few hours were like because no one’s even noticing what’s going on.’”
Into the Wild On an E-Scooter By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight What happens when you ride an e-scooter out of the city limits — until its battery dies?
The Fertility Doctor’s Secret Children By Krista Stevens Highlight Donald Cline justified his deception with choice bible verses, so that makes everything okay.
‘I Cannot Name Any Emotion That Is Uniquely Human.’ By Hope Reese Feature According to primatologist Frans de Waal, we don’t like to admit that animals, especially apes, have emotions just like ours, and science has become better at studying apes’ behaviors than human ones.
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Pearls By Katy Kelleher Feature Born from irritation and intrusion, luminous and complex, surprisingly durable: pearls are rich with symbolism and saturated with pain.
Baring the Bones of the Lost Country: The Last Paleontologist in Venezuela By Zoe Valery Feature In light of recent events in crisis-ridden Venezuela, its last vertebrate paleontologist puts together key pieces of the baffling puzzle that the country has become in the past couple of decades.
The Problem with Nature Writing By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight The sprawling Los Angeles Metropolitan Area is the best place in America to reassess the way we write and think about the natural world.
Atlantic City Is Really Going Down This Time By Rebecca McCarthy Feature There’s no doubt that Atlantic City is going under. The only question left is: Can an entire city donate its body to science?
Pam Houston on Coming Clean, Climate Change, and ‘Writing Deeply Into the Grasses’ By Kim Steutermann Rogers Feature Pam Houston’s new memoir is an ode to her beloved ranch, but also deals directly with the harrowing moments of childhood abuse that her fictional characters have been living through for years.
The Weather and the Wall By Will Meyer Feature Climate change and the border wall are more connected than you might think.
The Hunt for Planet Nine By Shannon Stirone Feature What will it take to find the biggest missing object in our solar system?
‘What If We Just Got Out of Nature’s Way?’ By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Instead of building seawalls or raising the land to prepare for rising sea levels, California’s Imperial Beach is considering moving the town a few blocks back from the ocean.
Our Understanding of Sun Exposure and Health Keeps Evolving By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Who would have thought scientists would ever compare wearing sunscreen to smoking cigarettes? At Outside magazine, Rowan Jacobsen explores.
A Race to Claim a Piece of Space: The Out-of-This World Obsession of Meteorite Hunters By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Meteorite hunters Mike Farmer and Robert Ward travel to Carancas, a tiny village at 12,000 feet in Peru’s remote altiplano, to examine a crater in the hope to claim precious rock from space.
The Science of Dreaming By Jessica Gross Feature Science journalist Alice Robb on why we need to take our dreams seriously.
The Bat-Borne Virus That Threatens to Become the Next Pandemic By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Steven Bedard, a former field biologist, travels around Bangladesh with a team of public health investigators studying Nipah, a bat-borne virus with the potential to become the next pandemic.
You’re Fine, and So Is Your Baby By Michelle Weber Highlight If new parents say they don’t have intrusive thoughts about harm befalling their babies, “they’re lying.”
Longreads Best of 2018: Science and Technology By Longreads Reading List We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in science and tech.
At the Very Least We Know the End of the World Will Have a Bright Side By Adam Boffa Feature Solarpunk, a new genre of science fiction, demands radical optimism of its writers and readers. It takes the apocalypse as given, but doesn’t assume the worst of people living through it.
Sea Lion Herschel: Steelhead Salmon Scapegoat By Krista Stevens Highlight They tried every deterrent, including forced relocation, but Herschel the sea lion and his posse returned year after year to enjoy the free steelhead salmon buffet in Puget Sound.
Duet for a Small Porpoise’s Extinction By Kimi Eisele Feature Kimi Eisele contemplates coherence, the near extinction of the vaquita, and the expensive bycatch of being human.
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Angora By Katy Kelleher Feature Angora rabbit fur is fluffy, and silky, and was especially popular with two influential 20th-century groups: Hollywood starlets and Nazi officers.
The Case for Letting Malibu Burn By Longreads Feature Many of California’s native ecosystems evolved to burn. Modern fire suppression creates fuels that lead to catastrophic fires. So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt?
