Longform Best of 2017

A child genius living in poverty, her mother, and the benefactor who became their tormenter.

“It is a beautiful hand: strong, with long, slender fingers and smooth skin, its nails ridgeless and pink. If you didn’t know Jonathan Koch—if you first met him, say, on the courts at the Calabasas Tennis & Swim Club—you might not suspect that his hand previously belonged to someone else.”

Among other things, crows can recognize human faces—and train each other to avoid people they don’t like.

In Arctic Siberia, Russian scientists are trying to stave off catastrophic climate change—by resurrecting an Ice Age biome complete with lab-grown woolly mammoths.

Imagine you felt like your skin was always on fire. Imagine you couldn’t even feel a bone break. The genetic link between those two extremes could hold the key to ending physical suffering.