Today's lead
The friends who keep your memory sharp: what 86 years of Harvard research reveals about ageing well
Psychologists identified three infant temperament types in the 1950s that still predict adult personality with uncomfortable accuracy — and the one labeled "difficult" turned out to be the most interesting
February 2026 Edition · Issue .02
Longevity, Legacy & the Things That Last
Each issue takes a single question and works it through the lens of food, lifestyle, and human behavior. This month: what makes a life that holds up over time.
Read this issue →
Features
The Long Read
Original reporting
Boomers who watch hours of TV a day are often grieving the specific kind of company a long marriage used to provide — the running commentary of a shared life — and the news anchor who reliably appears at the same hour is the partner who still shows up at the table on time
The news anchor at six o'clock isn't entertainment. Sometimes's he's the partner who still shows up at the table on time
Original reporting
What Does Their Consciousness Feel Like?
The documentary was supposed to be about cephalopod intelligence, but watching Heidi cycle through what looked unmistakably like active sleep states, I found myself thinking about…
From the wider press
What We're Reading
VegOut covers food, animals, environment, and the systems linking all three. These are the deep pieces from across the wider press that are shaping how our editors think about the beat. Updated weekly.
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The Counter
Is California giving its methane digesters too much credit?
This investigation scrutinizes California's subsidies for dairy methane digesters, questioning whether the state's climate math actually props up factory farming instead of driving real emissions reductions.
Read on The Counter -
Sentient Media
Faster Slaughterhouse Line Speeds Are Increasingly a Climate Problem
This investigation connects slaughterhouse line-speed deregulation under the Trump administration to climate impacts, worker safety, animal welfare, and food policy — revealing how agribusiness efficiency demands create compounding harms across the food system.
Read on Sentient Media -
Sentient Media
Organic Dairies Say Federal Pricing System Costs Them Millions
These lawsuits expose how federal dairy pricing rules funnel millions from organic producers to industrial operations — revealing structural flaws in a system that props up Big Dairy at sustainability's expense.
Read on Sentient Media
Themed reading
Wellness, Decoded
Psychology, mindfulness and the small habits that shape how we live.
The older some people get, the more they eat alone at restaurants without feeling weird about it - and that small shift says a lot about no longer performing for anyone
I spent endless years being reliable, reasonable, and easy to get along with — and somewhere around 31 I realized that those three qualities had quietly become a cage I built for myself out of other people's comfort
What your grandchildren actually remember about you — and it's not the gifts
Watch
VegOut on YouTube
Long-form conversations on food, science, and the lives behind the recipes. New episode every week.
Fasting May Be Destroying Your Gut — Unless You Do This
This Ancient Food Is Alive — And It May Heal Your Gut
Fiber: The Rediscovery That Changed How We Understand Chronic Disease
From Hospital to CattleCon: The Real Story of Keto
The Plant That Outperforms Meat and The $650 Million Industry Built to Kill It
The Most Important Food on Earth — And We're Losing It
Take the quiz
If you were a healing herb, which would you be?
Each herb holds a unique kind of magic — soothing, awakening, grounding, or clarifying. This 9-question quiz reveals the healing plant that mirrors your energy right now and what it says about your natural rhythm.
News
In the news
What's happening across food, science, climate and the systems shaping how we live.
Roughly 4.6 million Americans live within a half-mile of an abandoned oil well leaking methane into their air and water — and a tiny Montana nonprofit is doing the cleanup the industry walked away from
Rochester biologists just transplanted a naked mole rat gene into mice and extended their lifespan — and the 4.4% number matters far less than what the method actually proves
The Colorado River is about to break a 103-year-old legal compact and Corpus Christi could run dry next year — and the water isn't going where the headlines say it is
Most recent
Latest stories
Harvard tracked hundreds of lives for nearly 80 years, and one of the best predictors of health at 80 wasn’t cholesterol - it was the quality of people’s relationships at 50
I’m 37 and I used to think “healthy living” meant discipline - now I think it mostly means building a life you don’t secretly want to escape
Many people entering retirement were raised to believe hard work was the answer - then they reach a stage of life where there’s nothing left to work harder at
Psychology says the loneliest people in life aren't the ones nobody likes — they're the kind, helpful people everyone appreciates but nobody thinks to check on because they seem so self-sufficient
The conversation every boomer needs to have with their adult children that neither side wants to start but both sides desperately need
