Do octopuses dream? (NPR)
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
How can you tell if an octopus is dreaming? Well, you can’t, really. But the clever cephalopods do have periods of “active sleep” that seem a lot like human REM sleep. Except we don’t change color when we dream.

How to curse better (Atlas Obscura)
by Reem Khokhar
Cursing can be cathartic, expressive, and fun. But in India, as in many places, some of the choicest cuss words have roots in misogyny and other forms of bigotry. So two women started a crowdsourced project to find great curses and slang words that don’t promote hatred.

The real history of the filibuster (Vox)
by Zack Beauchamp
Is the filibuster a cherished protection for the minority party or a tool for blocking civil rights laws? Here’s how an accidental product of hasty rule-making has shaped American law.

The lives of enslaved fathers and children (Black Perspectives)
by Aisha Djelid
Black families living in slavery faced unimaginable obstacles to building enduring relationships. But records from fathers and their children show how hard they tried.

The great whitefly gene heist (The Atlantic)
by Katherine J. Wu
Whiteflies are a menace to many plants, partly because they can resist a common chemical defense. That’s an ability they appear to have gotten from a poisonous plant in a mysterious case of gene thievery.

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