When Death Came to Mauritius By Krista Stevens Highlight “Black waves bring animals to the town’s shore. Sticky corpses float on the oil.”
Taking Your Butt to a Higher Level By Carolyn Wells Highlight “Working in concert with the perfect breasts, the perfect bottom turns the body into the shape of an S. ‘It’s the classic hourglass figure,’ said Melissa. ‘That’s what you go after.'”
The Big Bear Reading List By Carolyn Wells Feature The elusive bear is a thing of fascination, and writers have a lot to say about them.
The Team of Scientists Behind Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight How scientists developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time.
The Heavy Burden of Breasts By Carolyn Wells Highlight “He covers his face with his hands. He doesn’t cry. He hasn’t really cried for eight years – since he started with testosterone injections.”
This Visionary Chef Has Unlocked the Secrets of the Sea Floor. Can He Change the Way We Eat? By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Harvesting rice from the sea? This Spanish chef dreams big.
How Vocal Injury Can Change You By Carolyn Wells Highlight “But in ‘speaking around’ that injury, I was apparently projecting a new personality into the world: a more monotone, less enthusiastic, less engaged personality.”
The Household Covid Budget By Carolyn Wells Highlight “She and her five housemates needed to find a way to live safely together. So they decided to adhere to a collective risk model of their own design.”
The Music of the Cave By Carolyn Wells Highlight “Though the team didn’t find the metal library, Armstrong put the adventure ‘up there with the moon landing.'”
Is the Cure for Cancer Locked in Shrunken Heads from the Amazon? By Seyward Darby Highlight Could shrunken heads from the Amazon hold the key to curing cancer?
The Rehab of Big Sky Country By Carolyn Wells Highlight “Daily treks in silence are an effective way to get anyone to reflect on their lives and consider what’s really important.”
A Bit of Mud is Good for You By Carolyn Wells Highlight “Leung says a “misalignment with nature” in building design is partly to blame for our scourge of chronic diseases and the current pandemic.”
Alzheimer’s Before Forty By Carolyn Wells Highlight “Shawn says Jo asked him to promise he would never let him go into a nursing home, that he would help him find some way to end his life on his own terms.”
The Grizzly Attack that Created a Bear Advocate By Carolyn Wells Highlight “The bear, still on all fours, was tall enough to look Mya in the eye. He huffed and gave a short growl. Then he charged.”
Plastic’s Broken Promise By Krista Stevens Highlight “The first one I saw was on the path outside my house: a single white plastic glove, the fingers curled inward like a sleeping animal.”
Longreads Best of 2020: Science and Nature By Carolyn Wells Feature Our top picks in science and nature stories for 2020.
The Dark Side of Birding By Krista Stevens Highlight “Undeniably, eBird … brings birders together and allows for rapid information sharing. It’s also created new—and sometimes contentious—etiquette and social dynamics.”
The Hungry Bears By Carolyn Wells Highlight “For the bears, the lack of salmon was a catastrophe on top of many others.”
The Alarmist: Is One of the Pandemic’s Loudest Scientific Voices Helping or Hurting Public Health? By Seyward Darby Highlight Meet Eric Feigl-Ding, the town crier of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Fond Farewell to a Friend: the Arecibo Telescope By Krista Stevens Highlight “Exploring the cosmos is a way for us to know ourselves. Each time we look up, in some way we are making contact with each other, with our past, present, and future.”
‘Anyone Can Walk in the Woods, But Who Truly Knows Them?’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Tristan McConnell writes about the forests of Mount Kenya, and the people there with a deep understanding of the land and the trees.
How Should We Talk About Suicide Online? By Seyward Darby Highlight “People are dying after joining a “pro-choice” suicide forum. How much is the site to blame?”
There She Goes: How to ‘Feminize’ a Face By Seyward Darby Highlight How a trans woman found the surgery that could restore her sense of self.
An Atlas of the Cosmos By Shannon Stirone Feature We’ve mapped Mars, the Moon, the solar system, even our own galaxy. Which means there is only one thing left to understand in this symbolic way and that is the entirety of the cosmos.
The Toll of Separation By Carolyn Wells Highlight Rachael Buchanan details the long and arduous journey to separate twins Safa and Marwa Bibi, who finally went back home to Pakistan this week.
Who Gets a Vaccine? By Carolyn Wells Highlight We may not have a COVID-19 vaccine, but who will even get it when we do?
“The Final Five Percent” Wins 2020 Science in Society Journalism Award By Longreads Highlight Congratulations to Tim Requarth, whose Longreads essay has won the 2020 award in the Longform Narratives category.
Fire/Flood: A Southern California Pastoral By Yxta Maya Murray Feature In and around Los Angeles, natural and man-made disasters have been inextricable for almost two centuries.
Notes for a Post-apocalyptic Novel By Frederick Reimers Feature When things get hard, we look to our most fundamental relationships. This is the story of a son, a father, a camper van, a pandemic, and the ties that bind.
Down the Rabbit Hole: A Psychedelic Reading List By Aaron Gilbreath Reading List The science, the strangeness, the promise, of psychedelic journeys.
