Longreads

Esperanto has always been a bit of trivia in my brain, nothing more: It’s the rare constructed language that has a sizable footprint and speaking population. (Sorry, Klingon and Dothraki.) But Katie Thornton’s trip to the 110th annual World Esperanto Congress opened my eyes—or, rather, malfermis miajn okulojn. This might just be the most wholesome, hopeful piece you read all ...

By now, plant-based meat and milk alternatives are so common as to be unremarkable, but the same can’t be said for the third pillar of vegan faux-food engineering: cheese. Much of that, as Sam Colbert explains, has to do with how casein works; it simply melts and stretches in a way that resists emulation. That doesn’t stop food scientists from trying, though, and Colbert tour...

In this New York Times investigation, Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz report on how autism therapy in the US has exploded into a multi-billion-dollar business, driven by rising diagnoses, private equity investment, and expanded Medicaid coverage—with little regulatory oversight. Kliff and Sanger-Katz focus on Compleat Kidz, a chain of ABA-therapy clinics in North ...

Remember learning about figures of speech, like similes and metaphors, in your elementary-school English class? In this fun feature, The Pudding analyzed 200,000 similes from popular fiction. As cool as a cucumber. As hot as hell. “Once you start looking, you see them everywhere,” writes Russell Samora, “from the classics like Jane Eyre to last year...

I admit it, AI—and our complicity with it—continues to surprise me. For Wired, Reece Rogers recounts how he spent a week with an iPhone strapped to his forehead, recording himself doing mundane chores around the house, such as making a salad, pouring drinks, and tying his shoes, all in a bid to train the forthcoming generation of humanoid robots on how to do human ta...