The Future of Decisions By Catherine Cusick Highlight If humans can’t decide, “the future of life will be decided at random.”
A Girl’s Guide to Missiles By Longreads Feature A professor returns to the California military base where she grew up to make sense of her family’s role developing weapons for the US government.
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things By Michelle Weber Highlight Scientists knew how serious climate change is. Politicians knew. Energy companies knew. The U.S. was ready to act, and then we… didn’t.
Dog Cloning: Controversial and Downright Creepy By Krista Stevens Highlight A clone is not a clone, it’s a twin born at a different time — one that is only ever about 85 percent the same as the original.
Sh*t or Get Off the Composter By Michelle Weber Highlight Maybe pooping into porcelain bowls of potable water wasn’t the best idea we ever had.
A British Seaweed Scientist Is Revered in Japan as ‘The Mother of the Sea’ By Longreads Feature Kathleen Drew-Baker died never having set foot in Japan, and never knowing what an impact her research would make. Plus, how to build a lazy bed, how to cook Irish blancmange, and other surprising seaweed stories.
The Toxic Legacy of Building 606 By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight The San Francisco police officers stationed on the Hunters Point Superfund site worked atop the literal and figurative fallout of the US Military’s WWII-era atomic testing.
A Beast for the Ages By Michael Engelhard Feature Why do we love (and fear, and kill) polar bears with so much intensity?
Arizona’s Aquifers Are a Laboratory of Our Dry Future By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight After large corporate farmers started growing nuts in one southeastern Arizona, local residents’ wells started going dry. The situation is only getting worse.
Some Like It Hot By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight The history of the chili pepper is entwined with the history of Chinese Communism and the fiery temperament of the Sichuanese people, but why?
Why Some Protected Natural Areas Should Remain Off-Limits By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight One of the best ways to protect the world’s oldest, largest trees is to conceal their location.
You’re Not Clean Until You’re 110% Clean By Michelle Weber Highlight Narcotics Anonymous programs offer community support — but turns away people who are using medication to aid their recovery.
Our Future Success Depends on Rocks from the Sky By Michelle Weber Highlight Steve Curry’s meteor-hunting hobby went from business to obsession to a connection with Cliven Bundy, and eventually landed him in jail after an armed standoff with law enforcement.
Waiting for Mental Health Care By Catherine Cusick Highlight Patients do ask for help with their mental health. And then they wait.
Taming the Great American Desert By johnforristerross Feature By advocating for agriculture in the arid West, Major John Wesley Powell challenged the way America viewed its right to develop the continent.
Here Be Tigers By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight If thousands of Australians claim to have seen the Tasmanian Tiger in the wild, then did it really go extinct in 1936?
Just Try It, You’ll Like It, It’s Good for You By Michelle Weber Highlight Remember when you could only buy milk that came from cows and goats, rather than nuts and seeds? We live in a post-dairy world now, and soy milk started it all.
Seeing the Modern World In the Disposable Plastic Straw By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight How our planet came to be filled with more disposable plastic straws than most of us will ever need.
Staten Island Wilderness, Going, Going, Gone? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight One of the last pieces of wilderness on Staten Island might get bulldozed.
On Saving the Cuban Crocodile from American Invasion By Krista Stevens Highlight “…female Cuban crocs, who might normally struggle to find a mate from their own small population, suddenly encounter exotic suitors of an appealing size and shenanigans ensue.”
Looking for a Greener Death By Michelle Weber Highlight Aquamation is more environmentally-friendly than cremation and has a growing number of supporters. So why is it mostly illegal?
You’re Putting My Brain Where, Exactly? By Michelle Weber Highlight When you donate your body to science, you don’t get a whole lot of say over what happens to your parts.
Lettuce Try to Grow Dwarf Tomatoes Next By Krista Stevens Highlight When we all eventually move to Mars, we’re going to need to know how to grow our own veggies. NASA’s working on the science of farming in space.
The Menace and the Promise of Autonomous Vehicles By Jacob Silverman Feature What does it mean to experiment with technology that we know will kill people, even if it could save lives?
The Myth of the Stanford Prison Experiment By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Despite its unscientific methods, the Stanford Prison Experiment continues to influence the way we understand human behavior.
Could South Africa’s Drought Help Deconstruct the Divisions of Apartheid? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Cape Town’s drought has turned the once green city brown, but can it help unite the rich and poor and black and white?
Life Under (Water) Pressure By Michelle Weber Highlight Welcome to the dangerous, cramped world of the saturation diver, and the extraordinary strangeness of working 500 feet under the sea.
Small-Town New Hampshire’s Battle with Bears and Liberty By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Grafton, New Hampshire has a bear problem, but how much of the problem is the result of human behavior?
What Is the Hot Commodity, Exactly? By Michelle Weber Highlight You say seaweed, I say fish, let’s call the whole harvest off. Welcome to the most interesting article on legal tensions around seaweed harvesting in Maine you’ll read all week, and maybe ever.
