Human Collision

Svante Pääbo And The Human Story

Editorial Board | Quillette | 6th October 2022

Concise explainer of why Svante Pääbo's Nobel Prize is so well deserved. Pääbo has sequenced the Neanderthal genome, discovered a previously unknown hominin species, the Denisovans, and shown that all three lineages — Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo Sapiens — overlapped and interbred 50,000 years ago. "He hasn’t just benefited humankind. He has illuminated it" (800 words)

Collision Course

Lauren Smiley | Intelligencer | 3rd October 2022

True-crime yarn, gloriously told. Family nets $6 million by staging car-crashes: They inflict moderate injuries on one another before each crash, then claim big insurance payouts afterwards. "Mize hurt you one at a time, pulling tools from a briefcase, cold and businesslike. He’d gash your brow with a razor or box cutter, scuff the wound with sandpaper, gripe if you didn’t bleed enough" (8,700 words)