We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year. Here is the best in science and nature.
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Posted inArts & Culture, Blog Post, Books, Nonfiction, Reading List, Writing
8 Longreads by Will Storr on the Science of Storytelling
Eight must-read stories that investigate science, belief, and the human impulse to tell stories.
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 inNonfiction
Truly Seeing the River: An Interview with Writer Boyce Upholt
Writing about the culture and beauty of the Mississippi Delta requires seeing the mighty river as more than a line of water.
Posted inNonfiction
We Still Don’t Know How to Navigate the Cultural Legacy of Eugenics
From abortion to immigration, a long-debunked scientific movement still casts long, confusing shadows over our most fraught debates.
Posted inCrime, Highlight, Quote Posts, Quotes
Do Not Mess with the Devils Hole Pupfish
Pupfish: 1, Drunk hooligan: 0
Posted inBooks, Culture, Nonfiction, Science Fiction, Story
The Politics of UFOs
In the past few years the world of UFO “researchers” has been afflicted by the kinds of conspiratorial cracks that have appeared throughout American culture: Who can be trusted?
Posted inFeature
On Solitude (and Isolation and Loneliness [and Brackets])
Sarah Fay reflects on four years spent in solitude (and isolation [and loneliness]), viewing it through the lens of punctuation.
Posted inStory
High Expectations: LSD, T.C. Boyle’s Women, and Me
“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.
Posted inNonfiction
Baring the Bones of the Lost Country: The Last Paleontologist in Venezuela
In light of recent events in crisis-ridden Venezuela, its last vertebrate paleontologist puts together key pieces of the baffling puzzle that the country has become in the past couple of decades.
