Greenland’s Deepening Ecological Grief By Krista Stevens Highlight “We no longer understand it here. We don’t trust it.”
What Does It Mean To Be Moved? By Jennifer Wilson Feature We can all remember a time when the wind touched us when we needed touching, pushed us along when we were unsure.
On a Wild Patch of Mississippi Soil By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Camping a wooded island along the lower Mississippi River introduces one writer to a land of legend and wildness.
Mountains, Transcending By Ailsa Ross Feature “Ever since I was five years old,” wrote opera singer–turned–Buddhist lama Alexandra David-Néel, “I craved to go beyond the garden gate, to follow the road that passed it by, and to set out for the Unknown.”
Here’s What Put Thousands of Californians in the Path of a Blaze By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Forest mismanagement, political corruption, and PG&E’s corporate culture created a highly combustible situation.
A Once and Future Beef By Will Meyer Feature Beef is a major culprit of the climate crisis, but if you want to consider beef’s future, then look to its past. The industry’s tactics have not changed as much as you might think.
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Mirrors By Katy Kelleher Feature Mirrors are sparkly and shiny and hypnotic. They’ve fascinated us for thousands of years. And they might show us a lot more about our society’s misplaced priorities than we care to see.
What Is Elizabeth Rush Reading? : Books on Antarctic Adventure, Ice, Motherhood By Dana Snitzky Commentary “I sometimes wonder if this continent of ice is begging for a different kind of story to be told about it.”
Why Bugs Deserve Our Respect By Jessica Gross Feature Fruit flies helped us win six Nobel prizes in medicine. Architects have been inspired by termite hills. Ecologist Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson explains why bugs are so essential to the world we live in.
‘Nothing Kept Me Up At Night the Way the Gorgon Stare Did.’ By Sam Jaffe Goldstein Feature The Gorgon Stare, a military drone-surveillance technology that can track multiple moving targets at once, is coming to a city near you.
Yentl Syndrome: A Deadly Data Bias Against Women By Longreads Feature The science of medicine is based on male bodies, but researchers are beginning to realize how vastly the symptoms of disease differ between the sexes — and how much danger women are in.
‘The Underland Is a Deeply Human Realm’: Getting Down with Robert Macfarlane By Tobias Carroll Feature “I thought the underland would be — of all the landscape forms that have drawn me to explore them — the most uninhabited. This proved wildly incorrect.”
Shovel, Knife, Story, Ax By Erika Howsare Feature When you live with animals, you collect killing stories.
Total Depravity: The Origins of the Drug Epidemic in Appalachia Laid Bare By Longreads Feature In an excerpt from his essay collection, Australian journalist Richard Cooke reports on the American opioid crisis through the astonished eyes of a foreigner visiting steel and coal country.
‘Someone Took Care to Get it Right’: The Birds of the Seven Kingdoms By Krista Stevens Highlight On the delightfully nerdy role of birds and bird calls in Game of Thrones.
From the Sewer to the Syringe By Katie Kosma Highlight Biomedical researchers find remedies for antibiotic-resistant infections in grody places.
High Expectations: LSD, T.C. Boyle’s Women, and Me By Christine Ro Feature “Outside Looking In” dramatizes the discovery of LSD and the cult of personality surrounding Timothy Leary. Our reviewer drops acid and thinks about how, for women, it can be safer to be a downer.
I Entered the World’s Longest, Loneliest Horse Race on a Whim, and I Won By Longreads Feature Somehow, implausibly, against all the odds, I became the youngest person and first woman ever to win the Mongol Derby. What made me so sure I was ready, when I was totally unprepared?
Take Two Stem Cell Injections and Don’t Call Me Until After I Cash Your $10,000 Cheque By Krista Stevens Highlight What don’t these stem cell snake-oil salespeople have? Any science to prove their claims or any scruples about preying on the vulnerable.
The Vital and Surprising Role of Driftwood By Krista Stevens Highlight Driftwood provides the necessary habitat and shelter that feeds a raft of marine life all the way up the food chain.
Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail By Suzanne Roberts Feature During a month hiking Muir’s “Range of Light,” three young women traversed snowy mountain passes, ran out of food, confronted a gendered wilderness, and learned to deal with each other.
Critics: Endgame By Soraya Roberts Feature If there’s no earth, there’s no art. How do you engage in cultural criticism at the end of the world?
The Age of Forever Crises By Linda Kinstler Feature We need to learn how to talk about our irreversible mistakes. Historian Kate Brown says the first step is to resist the Chernobylization of knowledge.
Did One Young Scientist Discover the Paleontology Pot of Gold? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Answers to some of paleontology’s most frustrating questions might lay in the dirt in North Dakota, but can the scientist who discovered them be believed?
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.
