Surviving Zoom meetings (Quartz)
by Patrick deHahn
Why are Zoom meetings so much more exhausting than real-life ones? It may be similar to the fatigue that deaf people face navigating a society that isn’t built for their needs.

The rats of COVID-19 (Wired)
by Eric Niiler
With restaurants closed and dumpsters empty, what’s a rat to do? Get bold, get creative, and possibly resort to cannibalism.

Church at the drive-in? Americans have done it before (The Washington Post)
by Stephen M. Koeth
Drive-in church might seem like a last-ditch attempt to keep Sunday services alive during the pandemic, but in the 1950s and ’60s, some religious leaders saw it as a selling point for their churches.

New York, 1609 (The New York Times)
by Michael Kimmelman
Before the arrival of the Dutch, the island of Mannahatta was home to wolves, bears, enormous forests, and streams teeming with trout. A conservation ecologist offers a virtual tour of the city long before it was a city.

Beyond drums and shadows (Lapham’s Quarterly)
by Sam Worley
In 1930, federal workers gathered oral histories from black communities along the Georgia coast. The result was a resource that showcased a complicated culture. But it was also a product of writers who wanted to talk about folk magic, not the history of slavery or ongoing land theft.

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