Is the Cure for Cancer Locked in Shrunken Heads from the Amazon? By Seyward Darby Highlight Could shrunken heads from the Amazon hold the key to curing cancer?
Longreads Best of 2020: Science and Nature By Carolyn Wells Feature Our top picks in science and nature stories for 2020.
The Dark Side of Birding By Krista Stevens Highlight “Undeniably, eBird … brings birders together and allows for rapid information sharing. It’s also created new—and sometimes contentious—etiquette and social dynamics.”
The Alarmist: Is One of the Pandemic’s Loudest Scientific Voices Helping or Hurting Public Health? By Seyward Darby Highlight Meet Eric Feigl-Ding, the town crier of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Fond Farewell to a Friend: the Arecibo Telescope By Krista Stevens Highlight “Exploring the cosmos is a way for us to know ourselves. Each time we look up, in some way we are making contact with each other, with our past, present, and future.”
The Digital Security Threat Inside Jameson Rich’s Body By Krista Stevens Highlight “It’s a feeling instead of living as a guinea pig for an opaque set of private interests, and a feeling that I can’t trust an industry that would ever put unsecure devices inside patients in the first place.”
An Atlas of the Cosmos By Shannon Stirone Feature We’ve mapped Mars, the Moon, the solar system, even our own galaxy. Which means there is only one thing left to understand in this symbolic way and that is the entirety of the cosmos.
“The Final Five Percent” Wins 2020 Science in Society Journalism Award By Longreads Highlight Congratulations to Tim Requarth, whose Longreads essay has won the 2020 award in the Longform Narratives category.
9,000 Seconds, With Only 47 to Spare By Krista Stevens Highlight “As he would later tell me, running was the rare sport where you mostly competed against yourself. You could learn without having to lose.”
The Stories of Notre Dame, as Told by Timber and Limestone By Krista Stevens Highlight ‘“Notre Dame will come out of this experience enriched,” she says. “And so will we.”’
Mowing the Lawn to Map the Ocean Floor, One Long, Slow Pass at a Time By Krista Stevens Highlight “The thinking is that fleets of tireless, automated, uncrewed vehicles could one day criss-cross our waters, making maps where humans can’t or won’t.”
Finding Solace in the Charged Particles of the Aurora Borealis By Krista Stevens Highlight “Cree First Nations believe ‘the northern lights are dancing spirits of loved ones who have passed on.’”
The Octopus’ Branding Makeover: From Devil-Fish to Brilliant Invertebrate By Krista Stevens Highlight “Each arm, with its own brain inside, moves completely independent of the others. So much so that arms have been known to steal food from each other.”
Climate Messaging: A Case for Negativity By Rebecca McCarthy Feature Nell Zink, Joy Williams, and a different kind of climate skepticism.
Greenland’s Deepening Ecological Grief By Krista Stevens Highlight “We no longer understand it here. We don’t trust it.”
Yentl Syndrome: A Deadly Data Bias Against Women By Longreads Feature The science of medicine is based on male bodies, but researchers are beginning to realize how vastly the symptoms of disease differ between the sexes — and how much danger women are in.
We Still Don’t Know How to Navigate the Cultural Legacy of Eugenics By Audrey Farley Feature From abortion to immigration, a long-debunked scientific movement still casts long, confusing shadows over our most fraught debates.
From the Sewer to the Syringe By Katie Kosma Highlight Biomedical researchers find remedies for antibiotic-resistant infections in grody places.
The Age of Forever Crises By Linda Kinstler Feature We need to learn how to talk about our irreversible mistakes. Historian Kate Brown says the first step is to resist the Chernobylization of knowledge.
Against Hustle: Jenny Odell Is Taking Her Time at the End of the World By Rebecca McCarthy Feature The attention economy is killing us and the planet. Artist and writer Jenny Odell talks about why slowing down could be the only way to survive.
‘I Cannot Name Any Emotion That Is Uniquely Human.’ By Hope Reese Feature According to primatologist Frans de Waal, we don’t like to admit that animals, especially apes, have emotions just like ours, and science has become better at studying apes’ behaviors than human ones.
A Fascinating Case of Precocious Puberty By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Patrick Burleigh carried an extremely rare genetic mutation, which brought on puberty prematurely.
The Hunt for Planet Nine By Shannon Stirone Feature What will it take to find the biggest missing object in our solar system?
Tommy Tomlinson: The Weight I Carry By Krista Stevens Highlight “On top of all that, some of us fight holes in our souls that a boxcar of donuts couldn’t fill.” Tommy Tomlinson shares the physical and emotional costs of weighing 460 pounds.
A Race to Claim a Piece of Space: The Out-of-This World Obsession of Meteorite Hunters By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Meteorite hunters Mike Farmer and Robert Ward travel to Carancas, a tiny village at 12,000 feet in Peru’s remote altiplano, to examine a crater in the hope to claim precious rock from space.
The Science of Dreaming By Jessica Gross Feature Science journalist Alice Robb on why we need to take our dreams seriously.
The Bat-Borne Virus That Threatens to Become the Next Pandemic By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Steven Bedard, a former field biologist, travels around Bangladesh with a team of public health investigators studying Nipah, a bat-borne virus with the potential to become the next pandemic.
Duet for a Small Porpoise’s Extinction By Kimi Eisele Feature Kimi Eisele contemplates coherence, the near extinction of the vaquita, and the expensive bycatch of being human.
Science Has Yet to Prove Mold Makes us Sick By Krista Stevens Highlight Is it the black mold causing your headaches, or is it all in your head? Don’t turn to science. It has no answers.
