James Baldwin on Freedom and Disappointment (Liberal Currents)
by Melvin Rogers
For James Baldwin, the politics of race in America wasn’t just about oppression and exploitation but about the methods people use to seek stability, deny death, and avoid spiritual discomfort.

Animal Power, Quantified (Eos)
by Carolyn Wilke
Beavers damming rivers and termites building earthen mounds aren’t just interesting subjects for nature shows. New research shows that these kinds of activities by wild animals are collectively as powerful as 500,000 extreme river floods each year. The impact of livestock is far greater.

What Species Belong Here? (Noema)
by Tristan Søbye Rapp
Is the moose native to Canada? Are dingos an invasive threat to Australian ecosystems? Our ideas about what makes a species belong somewhere depend on a view of nature as static that doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny.

The Buddha’s Birthplace (Smithsonian Magazine)
by Jeffrey Bartholet
In Lumbini, Nepal, where the Buddha is said to have been born, Buddhists of different traditions celebrate together. Archaeologists are trying to track down historical records of the Buddha’s life and the development of the religion in the centuries after its founding.

Reclaiming Democracy (The Conversation)
by Jennifer Victor
By some measures, for the first time since the 1960s, the US doesn’t qualify as a democracy. Slides toward authoritarianism don’t have to be permanent—if people take action.

Got a hot tip about a well-researched story that belongs on this list? Email us here.