When do rats help out? (NPR)
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
Rats are eager to help one another escape danger, especially if other Good Samaritan rats are there to help. But if their fellow rats turn out to be passive bystanders, it puts a damper on the altruism.

Why chickens are terrifying (The Walrus)
by David Waltner-Toews
The modern chicken is a miracle of efficient meat production for the growing cities of the world. It’s also a source of viruses that jump to humans, potentially leading to horrific new pandemics.

We don’t think well about pandemic (The Atlantic)
by Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
The current state of reopening forces us all to make choices that involve complex moral reasoning and risk evaluation. The trouble, as cognitive scientists find again and again, is that those are things individual humans are not well equipped for.

10,000 years of death ritual (Nursing Clio)
by Pınar Durgun
Why would Neolithic people dig up the dead years after burial to make plaster casts from their skulls? We don’t know the answer, but the question can shed light on our own ways of living with death.

Statehood and whiteness (The Washington Post)
by Paul Frymer
It could just be a coincidence that Washington, DC, with its ongoing political difficulties becoming a state, is also minority white. Then again, that same dynamic has played out time and again in debates over which areas should become U.S. states.

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