My fancy smartphone could never give me what the landline gave my grandmother
Company in old age versus the pressure of conversation.
goodreads
A terrible crime, a patient waiting for a transplant: The tragic, redemptive journey of one heart.
Three decades ago, a young man murdered his girlfriend and killed himself. What happened next to his heart was extraordinary.
The Diver Who Brings Up the Bodies
So many Indian farmers are killing themselves that bodies pile up at the end of one long canal. Gurbaksh Singh helps their families find closure.
You Can Do More Good Than You Think
All you need is compassion and the courage to open your mouth
A Hole in the Head: A History of Trepanation | The MIT Press Reader
A survey of trepanation, or trephination, the oldest surgical procedure known to humanity.
The Octopus: An Alien Among Us
Self-replicating, bacterial life first appeared on Earth about 4 billion years ago. For most of Earth’s history, life remained at the single-celled level, and nothing like a nervous system existed …
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Wind Power: How the 19th-Century’s Greatest Shipbuilder Opened the Pacific
[caption id="attachment_80535" align="aligncenter" width="576"] The Tahiti, seen here sailing on San Francisco Bay, was a 124-foot brigantine built by Tur...
SFO: The typo that almost crashed a plane - SFChronicle.com
The FAA conducted a safety review on the airport and found that pilots were mixing up two...
Ship of horrors: life and death on the lawless high seas
The long read: From bullying and sexual assault to squalid living conditions and forced labour, working at sea can be a grim business – and one deep-sea fishing fleet is particularly notorious
Something Special Is Happening in Rural America
There is a “brain gain” afoot that suggests a national homecoming to less bustling spaces.
Dead Reckoning • Damn Interesting
The 18th century misadventures of HMS Wager and her reluctant crew
Starshift
In an era of climate change, everything feels strange. Even the places we call home.
How Kentucky Gambled for Hundreds of Millions of Dollars From a Broadband Program It Didn’t Qualify for
Former Gov. Steve Beshear’s administration was warned multiple times that its rural broadband bet wouldn’t get certain federal funds. Meet the officials and conflicted consultants who didn’t listen and doomed the plan.
Solving Wildlife's Strangest Mysteries
When a creature mysteriously turns up dead in Alaska—be it a sea otter, polar bear, or humpback whale—veterinary pathologist Kathy Burek gets the call. Her necropsies reveal cause of death and causes for concern as climate change frees up new pathogens and other dangers in a…
On the Hunt for the World’s Rarest Pasta
Delicate and impossible to replicate, su filindeu (or the “threads of God”) is a pasta made of hundreds of tiny strands by a single woman in a hillside town in Sardinia. She’ll make it for you too—if you’re willing to walk 20 miles overnight
Everything We Do Not Know
Environmental and personal fallout from the Fukushima disaster continues nearly a decade later.
Inside the elite, detail-obsessed world of the people who judge the Oscars of classic cars
Behind the scenes at this year's Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the most prestigious car show in the world.
Paul Clarke Wants to Live
When a promising student left a neighborhood full of heroin for the University of Pennsylvania, it should have been a moving story. But what does an at-risk student actually need to thrive — or even just to survive?
Masterpiece Theater
A Dutch gallerist made thousands of forgeries and passed them off as the work of real artists. When he was caught, a new con began.
Palaces for the People - 99% Invisible
Eric Klinenberg is the author of a book called Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. The phrase “palaces for the people” actually comes from Andrew Carnegie who was known as a titan of the Gilded…
Confessions of a Professional Fake Shopper
When desperate storeowners want to convince passersby to stop in, they hire fun, happy people to pose as shoppers. They’re actually out-of-work actors, retirees, and me.
The High-Stakes World of High-End Yo Yos
The modern version of the toy is practically unrecognizable, an Object Lesson.
Column One: 'Blink once if you can hear me’ — a brain-injured man's remarkable awakening
Omar Salgado defied the odds in Room 20. But his is not a story about a miracle — it’s a story about medicine’s inability to accurately diagnose consciousness.
The Death of Alexander the Great: One of History’s Great Unsolved Mysteries
Alexander the Great’s death is an unsolved mystery. Was he a victim of natural causes, felled by some kind of fever, or did his marshals assassinate him, angered by his tyrannical ways? An autopsy…
A Lawyer, 40 Dead Americans, and a Billion Gallons of Coal Sludge
In 2008, a federally owned power plant spewed coal sludge over 300 acres in Tennessee. Now, 40 people who helped clean up the mess are dead and 300 ill.
The Golden Bough | The New Yorker
Grant Hadwin got a chainsaw and did something terrible.
Inside the Twisted, Worldwide Hunt for a $7 Million Stolen Car
Joe Ford, car detective, searches the world for stolen rare automobiles on the black market. The case he’s on now could set him up for life—if he’s not outsmarted by a skilled network of criminals and cheats.
How Graffiti Became Gentrified
Two decades after Rudy Giuliani tried to rid New York City of graffiti, the art form is flourishing—with unexpected consequences.
The Hidden Half: How the World Conceals its Secrets eBook: Michael Blastlan
Buy Low-Tops, Sell High-Tops: A Sneaker Exchange Is Worth $1 Billion
StockX is one of several online marketplaces that have turned resales of shoes into a big — and highly valued — business.
The Disappearing Physicist and His Elusive Particle - Issue 74: Networks -
He ushered symmetry into theoretical physics, then vanished without a trace.
The Curse of Playing the Wicked Witch of the West
After nearly dying while filming “The Wizard of Oz,” Margaret Hamilton spent the rest of her career trying to escape her evil character’s long shadow.
The Mystery of ‘Skeleton Lake’ Gets Deeper
Hundreds of skeletons are scattered around a site high in the Himalayas, and a new study overturns a leading theory about how they got there.
To date a dinosaur
Stegosaur expert Susie Maidment is laying crucial groundwork for assigning ages to fossils from North America’s most dinosaur-rich rocks. More precise timings promise to reveal plenty about how the beasts lived and evolved through time.
What Happened to Aung San Suu Kyi?
A human-rights icon’s fall from grace in Myanmar
Sahara Desert Libraries Are Home to Thousands of Ancient Texts
These desert libraries have been around for centuries and they hold sacred texts from ancient times.
Feral Horses, Fierce Controversy - Features - Jason G. Goldman - Alta Onlin
Wild mustang populations are out of control, competing with cattle and native wildlife for resources. If the federal government doesn’t rein them in, ranchers may take matters into their own hands.
The British Once Built a 1,100-Mile Hedge Through the Middle of India
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This quixotic colonial barrier was meant to enforce taxes.
Arming the Cartels
The inside story of a Texas gun-smuggling ring.
Finding Amelia Earhart’s Plane Seemed Impossible. Then Came a Startling Clu
Robert Ballard has found the Titanic and other famous shipwrecks. This month his crew started trying to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries.
Is It Possible to Stop a Mass Shooting Before It Happens?
You’ve never heard of her, but somewhere in America, a top-secret investigator known as the Savant is infiltrating online hate groups to take down the most violent men in the country.
This Is Why It's Nearly Impossible to Study Pain
A fundamental understanding of what pain is continues to evade scientists.
The Admiral of the String Theory Wars
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After a decade, Peter Woit still thinks string theory is a gory mess.
Brain Damage Saved His Music
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After a chunk of his brain was removed, guitarist Pat Martino got his groove back.
How to Save a Loggerhead
Go behind the scenes at the South Carolina Aquarium's Sea Turtle Care Center during a nearly yearlong journey to get a massive injured loggerhead back home
He'd been kept alive with tubes for nearly 17 years. Who is he, and is it possible he’s conscious?
Finding out his name turned out to be the easy part. The tough part was navigating the blurred lines that separate consciousness from unconsciousness — and figuring out whether his smile was really a smile.
Why Not The Worst?
In Search of Alaska’s Deadliest Catch: The Sea Cucumber
As a cuke deckhand, your job first and foremost consists of making sure your diver survives
The King of Adventure Stares Down Death
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A rodeo cowboy, skydiver, firefighter, ultramarathoner and motorcycle racer, Coach Stroud is a 71-year-old badass. And he’s determined to die on his own terms.