From abortion to immigration, a long-debunked scientific movement still casts long, confusing shadows over our most fraught debates.
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The Final Five Percent
If traumatic brain injuries can impact the parts of the brain responsible for personality, judgment, and impulse control, maybe injury should be a mitigating factor in criminal trials — but one neuroscientist discovers that assigning crime a biological basis creates more issues than it solves.
‘If an Animal Talks, I’m Sold’: An Interview with Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
Ann and Jeff Vandermeer discuss talking animals, the weird/fantasy divide, and the ‘rate of fey’ as an organizing principle in their new anthology of classic fantasy.
The Darwinian View of Our Storytelling Species
What the history of folktales reveals about the role storytelling played in human evolution.
The Hunt for Planet Nine
What will it take to find the biggest missing object in our solar system?
The Blood of the Crab
Horseshoe crab blood is an irreplaceable medical marvel — biomedical companies bleed 500,000 of them every year. Can this creature that’s been around since the dinosaurs be saved?
The Strange and Dangerous World of America’s Big Cat People
A headline-grabbing murder-for-hire plot helped expose the dark side of exotic animal ownership in the U.S. Is there now enough momentum to reform the industry?
We All Die In the End, But Our Skin Looks Great: A Reading List
Are you happy and well-rested, or did you just find a great new snail collagen sheet mask?
End of Discussion
There’s no such thing as a 140-character exegesis: the (non)-discourse around “Joker” is the latest to prove that social media is designed for emotion, not dialogue.
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Longreads Best of 2019: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Our top picks of the year, all in one place.

