Articles by Jessica Leigh Hester

The utensils are useful, but it's still unclear exactly how the corvids learn to make them.

Hear "Mediation Board" and meet A.L. Alexander, the schlocky but sincere host.

Garbage floating in the ocean is likely to be swarming with bacteria, which can make corals sick.

It's just 0.395 millimeters long.

Nearly a century after talkies stole the show, composers, musicians, and audiences are still playing along.

What if concrete could heal itself from the inside out?

To better understand the distant past, it can help to taste and smell it.

"Cræft," Alexander Langlands' excellent book, is part history, part travelog, and part hay-making manual.

By wielding their built-in defenses, some prehistoric creatures thwacked enemies hard enough to crack bone.

Microscopic structures hint at an iridescent past.

In the 1920s and 30s, regulators and experts grappled with how to stop the sale of dubious devices and miracle cures over the airwaves.

Researchers sent an autonomous underwater vehicle and a robot to study Havre, which erupted in 2012.

A reunion after hundreds of miles and months at sea.

It's more than 23 million digits long, if you're counting.

A prehistoric snack is now thought to be a previously unknown species.

The past, present, and future of footwear, from an expert charged with keeping soles intact.

Researchers studied 40 years of craniums on an island in Lake Superior.

Sheltered against the freezing winter, this plant show transports visitors back in time, and to a balmier climate.

Strong and flexible building materials, inspired by ocean life.

High-tech imaging tools are taking researchers under the paint, layer by layer.

A behind-the-scenes look at harvest time, soil drainage, and Pleistocene megafauna.

It turns out the “minimal nutritional requirements for life” are quite minimal indeed.

When wildfires, earthquakes, floods, and other crises delivered one wallop after another, bravery, kindness, and creativity fought back.

Personal stories of naturalization from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.