The original reporting, personal essays, columns, and collaborations that were our most-read stories of the year.

Three asylum seekers navigate coronavirus and climate change at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2018, Floridians voted overwhelmingly to end greyhound racing, a sport they were told was archaic and inhumane. What if they were wrong?

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.

A ‘90s romance novel offers a glimpse of queer possibility and illuminates the complications of writing about queer love.

Michael A. Gonzales recounts the life lessons of a favorite auntie.

Last week, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, was released on Disney+. Jeanna Kadlec takes this opportunity to explore how Disney has dealt with their most powerful of witches.

From way back in ’80s Philadelphia, Elizabeth Isadora Gold remembers her first writing teacher, the mail art artist/lyricist Stu Horn.

What makes good or bad design happen anywhere depends on who has the most power.

Gabriel Thompson takes us into San Francisco Immigration Court and the labyrinthine system that asylum seekers—and attorneys and judges—are up against.

What happens if the stories we tell ourselves about our lives leave us lonely, wrestling with meaning?

On Syd Barrett’s time with Pink Floyd and making an album with household objects and found sounds.

Remembering the woman who outsang Ray Charles.

A professor embarks on a six-month binge of celebrity-led online courses.

In and around Los Angeles, natural and man-made disasters have been inextricable for almost two centuries.

When your name is Osama and you’re living in post-9/11 America, you always know The Question is coming.

“Although the world has made space for more diverse women, we are still expected to fill the role of the one who wants to be loved, to be a mother when perhaps we only ever wanted to paint, to write, to explore the world alone, on our own terms.”

What if the Olympic Games never come back?

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.

Generations of musicians got their start busking the streets of the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. After a decade of ‘hobo-ing’ around cities like New Orleans, Paris, and New York, Charley Crockett discovered it was his turn.

Captain Scott took jars to the Antarctic with him, and Edmund Hillary took one up Everest. Marmalade is part of the British national myth. Livvy Potts wants to know why.

A trans activist from El Salvador who has helped countless trans migrant women fight for asylum in the U.S. finds asylum for herself.

Lockets simultaneously display and hide. But does squirreling our love and grief away in a piece of jewelry keep the memories and emotions present for us, or minimize them?

A meditation on the nature of grief, at a time when the whole world seems to be grieving.

How reporting domestic violence works against women in family court.

Sometimes it’s not who you work with, but who you work for.

Upon discovering that her mother had been a member of the group Women Strike For Peace (WSP), Heidi Hutner becomes obsessed with feminist nuclear history.

The soft-focus Britain of Downton Abbey bears little resemblance to the real Britain collapsing under the weight of racism, austerity, and COVID-19. As Brexit plods on, it’s time for an honest reckoning of the history and future of this outsize little island.

Stories of hip-hop’s genius, influence, struggle, and endurance.