“Since this had left him without a wife, he asked to be absolved from the crime of murder, and to be granted dispensation to marry again.” Dr. Hannes Kleineke explores the Harcourt brothers in a blog dedicated to medieval members of the Parliament of England.

“It’s been said that no species can fully imagine its own extinction. Our inability to imagine ours may ultimately be the source of our undoing.” Kelly Hayes, the writer at Transformative Spaces, reflects on ecological collapse and the future of humanity and our world.

“These old-growth forests are not renewable. They’re not coming back after you log them.” Dive into this longread at The Narhwal about a rainforest deep in the interior of British Columbia that is being clear-cut as fast as the Amazon.

Erynn Brook compiles a thread of tweets, about her encounter with an 18-year-old stranger having a seizure on the subway, into a post on her blog.

“We’re all a little weird thanks to our mothers. I’m carrying that tradition on with my own children.” Mary Laura Philpott, who blogged previously at I Miss You When I Blink, shares an excerpt from her new essay collection at Longreads.

At Columbia Journalism Review, 18 journalists share how — or whether — they use tape recorders during interviews.

Musings at Richly Evocative on the Wandle in London: “Walking next to a river, perhaps especially an urban survivor like the Wandle, is the chance to connect with something beyond ourselves. Where the river goes and how it turns, or loops back on itself, meanders and twists, is often nothing to do with us humans.”

“By colorizing their photographs, they become less abstract. They are no longer just representing something old, a historical event that happened so many years ago.” For the Faces of Auschwitz project, photo colorist Marina Amaral transforms photos of Holocaust victims.

Journalist Danny Gold investigates the movement converting El Salvador’s gang members into born-again Christians. For those in the gangs, the only way out is through the door of the church.

Start planning your 2019 reading schedule with Literary Hub’s exhaustive list of exciting future releases — including numerous titles by women writers and writers of color.

At Longreads, Anne Thériault wittily chronicles the early trials and tribulations of Renaissance queen Catherine de’ Medici, from her childhood in war-ravaged Florence to the first few years of her fraught marriage with the heir to the French throne.

Journalist Iain Akerman follows Mona El Hallak, a Lebanese architect and activist, as she tries to reconstruct facets of the city’s past through the archive of a long-defunct photographer’s studio.

Why do we love (and fear, and kill) polar bears with so much intensity? At Longreads, Michael Engelhard, a wilderness guide and anthropologist, looks into the Arctic predator’s grip on our imagination.

At Undark, Amy Maxmen follows the archaeologists and scientists who are racing to document what’s left of the ancient African civilization of Nubia.

The creator of The Wire and Treme remembers his years of friendship and collaboration with the late Anthony Bourdain.