What Can We Say About Mass Shootings? (NPR)
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
What do we know about stopping mass shootings? There’s some pretty good evidence about measures that do and don’t work. There’s also a shocking disparity in how much research is devoted to the issue compared to other public health problems.

Playing with Rats (The Atlantic)
by Ed Yong
Scientists know a lot about how rats’ brains act in tightly controlled conditions. But that doesn’t mean they understand the things they do in the wild—like play. To fix that, some researchers taught the rodents to play tag.

Women of the Mongol Empire (Atlas Obscura)
by Sarah Durn
We know the medieval Mongols as successful warriors partly because so many of them—up to 90 percent of the men—could mobilize for battle. That organizational agility was only possible because of the women who did everything else.

Grief in the Brain (Psyche)
by Saren H Seeley and Mary-Frances O’Connor
Why is grieving such a long and complicated process? Part of it has to do with the way our brain must train itself to make new predictions and build a different sense of self.

The Pleasures of Slant Rhyme (The New Yorker)
by Adam Gopnik
Much of rap—and lots of other poetry—depends on words that almost rhyme, but not quite. Is that a bug or a feature? And why is it so much harder to rhyme in English than in many other languages?

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