Fear-mongering through data (or a lack thereof): on Alex Berenson, Malcolm Gladwell, and “what happens when tidy narratives outrun the science.”
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Posted inStory
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Orchids
Sometimes a flower is just a flower, and sometimes it’s a powerful vehicle for giving free rein to our worst colonialist and misogynist impulses.
Posted inHighlight, Quotes, Science & Nature
From the Sewer to the Syringe
Biomedical researchers find remedies for antibiotic-resistant infections in grody places.
Posted inArts & Culture, Highlight, Quote Posts, Quotes
Apocalypse Now? Now? How About Now?
“And yet I am also, in the darkest corners of my heart, a doomsday prepper myself.”
Posted inNonfiction
The Misconception of the Wild
Leo Schwartz finds out what lessons can be learned from the burned-out Oregon backcountry.
Posted inHighlight, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes, Science & Nature
Seagulls Who Eat People Food Poop People Food on Protected Lands
Fast food is killing the human world. Now it could be killing California gulls’ protected island habitat.
Posted inArts & Culture, Culture, Feature, History, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story
All Hail the Rat King
From Martin Luther to The Nutcracker, Germany’s original national nightmare was a tangled knot of writhing rats.
Posted inReading List
Longreads Best of 2018: Science and Technology
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in science and tech.
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story
A Green New Jail
What does environmental justice look like in a landscape overrun by prisons? Where the incarcerated suffer from unusually polluted surroundings, and prisons are a toxin in their own right?
Posted inBooks
What Is Elizabeth Rush Reading? : Books on Antarctic Adventure, Ice, Motherhood
“I sometimes wonder if this continent of ice is begging for a different kind of story to be told about it.”
