Search Results for: Nature

Paleo Fitness: The Workout that Time Forgot

Longreads Pick

“We live like zoo animals!” It’s an idea Erwan Le Corre borrowed from the British zoologist Desmond Morris, author of the 1967 classic “The Naked Ape,” and it’s central to his worldview: that we are essentially wild creatures ill-suited to desk jobs and processed foods. “We have become divorced from nature, trapped in colorless boxes,” Le Corre says. “We have lost our adaptability, and it’s threatening our health and longevity.”

Author: Nick Heil
Source: Outside
Published: Dec 17, 2010
Length: 18 minutes (4,600 words)

The Nazi and the Psychiatrist

Longreads Pick

Encounters behind bars between Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering and an American doctor 65 years ago raise questions about responsibility, allegiance and the nature of evil. “After Goering matter-of-factly recounted the murder of a close associate that he had once set into motion, Kelley asked how he could bring himself to demand his old friend be killed. ‘Goering stopped talking and stared at me, puzzled, as if I were not quite bright,’ Kelley recalled. ‘Then he shrugged his great shoulders, turned up his palms and said slowly, in simple, one-syllable words: “But he was in my way….” ‘”

Published: Dec 26, 2010
Length: 12 minutes (3,178 words)

Brendan Maher: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

I’m the biology features editor for the news team at Nature, the UK-based science journal. Longreads kindly asked me to offer up my five favourite couldn’t-put-down features for the year, and I was happy to comply. The focus on biology wasn’t intentional, but I did purposely keep features from Nature out of the running (it’s like choosing which child you love best!).

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Autism’s First Child (John Donvan & Caren Zucker, The Atlantic, October 2010)

This profile of the first person technically diagnosed with autism is as touching as it is revealing about the troubles faced by doctors, patients and patient advocates when trying to determine a diagnosis.

Paper Trail: Inside the Stem Cell Wars (sub req’d) (Peter Aldhous, New Scientist, June 9, 2010)

Peter Aldhous went to town with a data-mining quest designed to verify a claim that several scientists had been complaining about: namely, that the publication of papers in a specific area of stem cell research was being manipulated by a cadre of influential scientists. It’s not exactly narrative form, but a stellar data visualization effort.

Depression’s Upside (Jonah Lehrer, New York Times, Feb. 28, 2010)

Jonah Lehrer deftly maneuvered this puzzling, but oddly compelling argument that depression has a purpose and benefit for the brain. It doesn’t soft pedal the real and relevant criticisms of evolutionary psychology, but still presents a nice picture of the “tortured genius” paradox (see also David Dobbs’ “Orchid Children” which missed making this list for a temporal technicality).

The Covenant (Peter J. Boyer, The New Yorker, Sept. 6, 2010)

Peter J. Boyer’s masterfully nuanced profile of NIH director Francis Collins was exquisitely written and did a nice job of really digging into someone whose faith–it would seem–has lots of potential to come into conflict with his job. It also happened to be timed quite well with the collapse of funding for stem cell research–something that The New Yorker couldn’t plan for, but obviously accommodated quite deftly.

The Brain that Changed Everything (Luke Dittrich, Esquire, Oct. 25, 2010)

This is just a stirring feature on one of the events of the year for neuroanatomy. It recounts the life and death and dissection of Henry Molaison, who lost the ability to form new memories after an operation to remove his hippocampus. The operation was performed by William Scoville and the piece is written by Scoville’s grandson.

Unauthorized, but Not Untrue

Longreads Pick

The real story of a biographer in a celebrity culture of public denials, media timidity, and legal threats. “Even after all these years I’m still not comfortable with the term unauthorized, because it sounds so nefarious, almost as if it involves breaking and entering. Admittedly, biography by its very nature is an invasion of a life—an intimate examination by the biographer, who burrows deeper and deeper to probe the unknown, reveal the unseen, illuminate the unexpected. Despite my discomfort with the word, I firmly believe that unauthorized biography can be a public service and a boon to history.”

Published: Dec 3, 2010
Length: 20 minutes (5,129 words)

Dancing Near the Stars

Longreads Pick

Profile of “Jersey Shore”‘s Mike “the Situation” Sorrentino. “Sure, they all got shithouse drunk and screamed bleeped curse words in one another’s faces and flashed their thongs and referred to girls who didn’t meet their rigorous physical-attractiveness standards as ‘grenades’ and generally embodied every negative stereotype associated with Italian-American culture you can embody without murdering someone for control of a gambling syndicate. But they never seemed less than totally genuine, something you can’t say about the last ten years of ‘Real World’ fuckbots, and they lived, for the most part, by a bro code, and they kept each other in line, and they always said grace at dinner. They were less like the Sopranos and more like the Simpsons—irascible cartoons with skin tones not found in nature, accused of contributing to the decline of family values while actually reaffirming those values. And over the course of two seasons, they’ve grown into the most charismatic characters on TV.”

Source: GQ
Published: Nov 22, 2010
Length: 24 minutes (6,196 words)

Eleven Lives

Longreads Pick

The oil will have stopped gushing into the Gulf. The shoreline and the estuaries and the beaches will have been scrubbed clean by man and nature. BP and Transocean will have resumed business as usual. But the original wound will never heal. This is the story of what’s been lost.

Author: Tom Junod
Source: Esquire
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 37 minutes (9,275 words)

Putting America’s Diet on a Diet

Longreads Pick

On his first day in Huntington, W. Va., Jamie Oliver spent the afternoon at Hillbilly Hot Dogs, pitching in to cook its signature 15-pound burger. That’s 10 pounds of meat, 5 pounds of custom-made bun, American cheese, tomatoes, onions, pickles, ketchup, mustard and mayo. Then he learned how to perfect the Home Wrecker, the eatery’s famous 15-inch, one-pound hot dog (boil first, then grill in butter).

Published: Oct 6, 2009
Length: 18 minutes (4,619 words)