Kinship and Contradictions

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity

Overconsumed

Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard

Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming

Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things

American Horror Story

Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear

The Writing on the Wall

Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery

This Woman’s Work

Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism

Queen of the Night

Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark

A Toothsome Tale

Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites

A Rebel to Remember

Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner

Going for Gold

Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten

Godmother to Poets

An introduction to Muriel Rukeyser

A Verray, Parfit Gentil Knyght

The first biography of Geoffrey Chaucer in a generation explores the places that inspired the English poet

Between Science and Séance

The poltergeist that cemented a ghost hunter’s theory about the psyche

The Lingo of LOLcats

How language is humanity’s most spectacular open-source project

Caracara, Caw Caw

Meet the smartest bird you’ve never heard of

Hope Against the Storm

How American communities contend with rising sea levels

Oh, Cruel Stagolee

Why you should never mess with a bad man’s hat

The Cherry Blossom Evangelist

How an English eccentric saved Japan’s beloved sakura—and spread them around the world

Our One-Click World

Online convenience has blinded us to the growth of a tech underclass

Women at War

The fight for a spot on the frontlines (and in the history books)

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