There’s a science to the perception of time. We’ve all got an “internal clock,” and have memory that helps measure duration and distance between events. There’s a word, zeitgeber, to describe those natural occurrences (like sunlight and seasons) by which our circadian… Read More ›

Articles
Why do I wake up at the same time every night?
“Nobody sleeps through the night,” he says. “This goes back to our caveman days where one would wake up, scan the environment, make sure there are no tigers, and then go back to sleep.” But while waking up in the… Read More ›
The Social Life of Forests
As a child, Suzanne Simard often roamed Canada’s old-growth forests with her siblings, building forts from fallen branches, foraging mushrooms and huckleberries and occasionally eating handfuls of dirt (she liked the taste). Her grandfather and uncles, meanwhile, worked nearby as… Read More ›
Best Crime Reporting of 2020
Through December, we’re featuring Longreads’ Best of 2020. After taking a plunge into the murky world of crime, we narrowed down our favorites. Enjoy these Best of Crime reads, showcasing gripping tales and insights into the human psyche… More here…. Read More ›
Apple Silicon M1 Disruption
First, Markitecture. A participant I won’t name argued that Apple Silicon is “just marketing BS”, that a “Raspberry Pi is an ARM computer just like an M1 Mac”. Knowledgeable participants gently explained that starting with the A6, Apple Silicon cores… Read More ›
Why Do We Listen to New Music?
Why do we even listen to new music anymore? Most people have all the songs they could ever need by the time they turn 30. Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube can whisk us back to the gates and gables of… Read More ›
I Miss Making CD Mixtapes and Discovering Music
That’s probably the thing I miss most about mix CDs that doesn’t really translate to the playlists I now create in the cloud: They were so often dictated by discovery. Back in middle school, in those earliest days of mix… Read More ›
The best articles of 2020
If you are looking for some decent longform articles, this selection from Pocket will keep you busy for a while. Well worth checking out no matter what Read Later service you use.
27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful
My daughter found my Psion 3a the other day, tucked at the back of a cupboard she was clearing out for me. It looked fine and is still in excellent aesthetic condition, and fortunately I had left no batteries inside… Read More ›
Castles in the Sky
While renovating a house in San Francisco, a couple discovered a diary, hidden away for more than a century. It held a love story—and a mystery. A few years ago, my husband and I decided to buy a house. We… Read More ›