Cristina Robinson, et al: Complex birdsongs help biologists piece together the evolution of lifelong learning
Our human ability to learn language slows down as we get older, but scientists are not sure how or why this happens. An unexpected way to understand this learning process might come from listening to birds sing.
Derrick Z. Jackson: The Boy Scouts can do better than teaming up with Trump’s EPA
In more sane times, it would be natural for the Boy Scouts of America to share its do-gooder image with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Elizabeth Weil: The Climate Crisis Is Happening Right Now
Record high temperatures. Record fires. Record smoke. Former California Gov. Jerry Brown has a few things to say about the state’s converging apocalypses.
Karen Friedland: Tattered Curtains
they’re taking down
all the big trees in his back yard,
and next the shrubs, and now the small house itself
Video: Why do whales sing?
This short animated film, produced by Stephanie Sardelis of the Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada, decodes the evocative melodies composed by the world’s largest mammals.
Henry Beston: A Year of life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.
Mason Adams: Appalachia’s Deep History of Resistance
Protest runs through the region’s veins like coal seams through the mountains.
John Clare: The Thunder Mutters
The thunder mutters louder & more loud
With quicker motion hay folks ply the rake
Joan E. Bauer: The Sisterhood of Buddleias
Sarah plants a butterfly bush
for the purple, nectar-rich splendor in a pot.
Hannah wants some pink extravagance
to beckon hummingbirds.
Gary Margolis: Ending the War
one morning
in August, she can walk
away from her fury
of pines, and catch
her breath
Ellery Akers: Rachel Carson
I think of the way she knew
that eels slid from brook to brook
and then to the sea.
Agostino Petroni: How to Save the Sea | Lessons from an Italian Fishing Community
How one small stretch of coastline went from a hotbed of drug smuggling to a model of ecological restoration.
Paul Christensen: A Comforting Breeze
I am hopeful again, a man who has awakened from a long dream to find that heaven has opened its granary at last and spilled this nourishment down upon each of us, all of us.
Andrew Bacevich: Biden Wins
Assume Joe Biden wins the presidency. Then What?
