The bowerbird, which lives on the east coast of Australia, has an abiding eye for anything blue. Solitary males travel great distances to bring back all manner of blue objects to decorate their nests. Shells, flowers, plastic bottles, and feathers are all fair game, and bowerbirds have even been known to grind up blue pigments […]
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What We Save, What We Destroy: A Reading List on Difficult Heritage
The present we inhabit is shaped by the mixed legacies of the past.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Wright Thompson, Mitch Moxley, Patrick Radden Keefe, Joshua Sokol, and Ariane Todes.
What We Wear: A Reading List on Fashion and Our Complex Relationship to Clothes
Getting dressed isn’t a low-stakes activity.
Odd, Genius, or Something In Between: A Reading List on Writers
“Give me the weird tics, the turns of phrase, the strange beginnings. Give me the writer in their natural habitat.”
‘Some Things Never Leave You’: Christian Livermore on Poverty’s Indelible Marks
“For me, passing means trying to be anything other than what I was, and what I fear so desperately I always will be: poor white trash.”
Shamrocks Not Required: A Reading List on Modern Ireland
Eight stories to complicate your clichéd idea of Ireland.
‘This Wasn’t His First Time’
A kidnapping deemed a hoax, the newbie detective who cracked the case, and the Harvard-trained lawyer whose mental unraveling set the whole story in motion.
Climate Change Is Personal for These Alaskan Women
Here are the voices of the Alaskans threatened by climate change.
The Fracking Lottery
“When I moved to Billtown, I worried most about whether fracking tainted groundwater. By the time I left the area, my biggest concern was whether the liberty granted to citizens to lease their land, or to otherwise act in ways that limits others’ access to environmental goods, taints democracy.”

