Noema’s Top 10 Reads Of 2025

Our best longform journalism and essays from 2025.

Credits

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Artwork by Daniel Barreto for Noema Magazine.
Daniel Barreto for Noema Magazine

The Last Days Of Social Media

Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion.

by James O’Sullivan


Artwork by Beatrice Caciotti for Noema Magazine.
Beatrice Caciotti for Noema Magazine

A Third Path For AI Beyond The US-China Binary

What if the future of AI isn’t defined by Washington or Beijing, but by improvisation elsewhere?

by Dang Nguyen


Illustration by Hélène Blanc for Noema Magazine.
Hélène Blanc for Noema Magazine

Why Science Hasn’t Solved Consciousness (Yet)

To understand life, we must stop treating organisms like machines and minds like code.

by Adam Frank


NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory

The Unseen Fury Of Solar Storms

Lurking in every space weather forecaster’s mind is the hypothetical big one, a solar storm so huge it could bring our networked, planetary civilization to its knees.

by Henry Wismayer


Artwork by Sophie Douala for Noema Magazine.
Sophie Douala for Noema Magazine

From Statecraft To Soulcraft

How the world’s illiberal powers like Russia, China and increasingly the U.S. rule through their visions of the good life.

by Alexandre Lefebvre


Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath for Noema Magazine
Ibrahim Rayintakath for Noema Magazine

The Languages Lost To Climate Change

Climate catastrophes and biodiversity loss are endangering languages across the globe.

by Julia Webster Ayuso


An illustration of a crumbling building and a bulldozer
Vartika Sharma for Noema Magazine (images courtesy mzacha and Shaun Greiner)

The Shrouded, Sinister History Of The Bulldozer

From India to the Amazon to Israel, bulldozers have left a path of destruction that offers a cautionary tale for how technology without safeguards can be misused.

by Joe Zadeh


Blake Cale for Noema Magazine
Blake Cale for Noema Magazine

The Moral Authority Of Animals

For millennia before we showed up on the scene, social animals — those living in societies and cooperating for survival — had been creating cultures imbued with ethics.

by Jay Griffiths


Illustration by Zhenya Oliinyk for Noema Magazine.
Zhenya Oliinyk for Noema Magazine

Welcome To The New Warring States

Today’s global turbulence has echoes in Chinese history.

by Hui Huang


Along the highway near Nukus, the capital of the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan. (All photography by Hassan Kurbanbaev for Noema Magazine)

Signs Of Life In A Desert Of Death

In the dry and fiery deserts of Central Asia, among the mythical sites of both the first human and the end of all days, I found evidence that life restores itself even on the bleakest edge of ecological apocalypse.

by Nick Hunt