They perform daring escapes from slaughterhouses, zoos, and laboratories. But animals on the run are only as free as we want them to be.
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A Mysterious Crack Appears: Past Trauma and Future Doom Meet in “Friday Black”
In Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s fantastical short story collection, the strangest fantasy of all is that people try to act morally in a corrupt world.
Longreads Best of 2019: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Our top picks of the year, all in one place.
The Return of the Face
Physiognomy is a discarded 19th-century pseudoscience. Why can’t we stop practicing it?
Putting a New Stone on the Grave: Sjón Brings the Golem to Iceland
Sjón’s “CoDex 1962” is the fulfillment of a pact he made with the Maharal of Prague in the Old Jewish Cemetery almost three decades ago.
Taming the Great American Desert
By advocating for agriculture in the arid West, Major John Wesley Powell challenged the way America viewed its right to develop the continent.
A Beast for the Ages
Why do we love (and fear, and kill) polar bears with so much intensity?
Bruce Springsteen: Sadness, Love, Madness, and Soul
“All you needed to do,” Springsteen says, “was to risk being your true self.” We ignore our demons at our peril.
Cahiers du Post-Cinéma
The movie theater was once a kind of lay church, with festivals like TIFF serving as annual religious holidays — until new houses of worship opened online.
Just Try It, You’ll Like It, It’s Good for You
Remember when you could only buy milk that came from cows and goats, rather than nuts and seeds? We live in a post-dairy world now, and soy milk started it all.

