Robuta

Dec 12, 2025 - Some 96 million Americans claim to engage in "birding" as a hobby. Cog editor Cloe Axelson is not one of them, and may never be.

Oct 21, 2025 - It can be easy to forget pain that is no longer present in our lives, writes Jodie Noel Vinson, of the four-year battle with long COVID she and her husband...

Jan 15, 2026 - In early December, I went to dinner with coworkers and said something along the lines of, “There’s this show I need to tell you about. It’s about hockey...

Jan 16, 2026 - As I knitted, I remembered the thrill of embarking on a project without knowing what it would become, or if I would have the skills to pull it off, writes...

Nov 21, 2025 - Katie Kurtzman’s 40th birthday featured flannel, Dr. Martens and a ’90s cover band. It felt like finding something I didn’t know I needed, she writes....

Jan 16, 2026 - On a July day in 1966, Yolanda DiMartinis Page took her youngest (and sixth) child, Janice, on a grand adventure that lived on in Janice's memory as her...

Aug 15, 2025 - The Newport Folk Festival is one of those places where, so often, you find what you didn't quite know you needed, writes Sara Shukla. That's part of...

Nov 20, 2025 - It's the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Flights, the largest refugee airlift in history. But how immigrants to the U.S. are treated depends more on...

Dec 19, 2025 - We published 227 pieces of original writing in 2025, by nearly as many contributors. Our “Best of 2025” post is a chance to revisit a favorite essay, or...

Feb 6, 2025 - Climate change can be confusing, writes Courtney Humphries, an assistant professor of environmental studies. Yes, we’ll continue to have big snows. They will...

Jan 9, 2026 - When I set out to find hog jowl on New Year's Eve, I wasn't just shopping, writes Bridgit Brown. I was looking for proof that parts of us still lived...

Patriots haters are mad that New England has already re-established itself as one of the NFL’s best teams, just six years after Tom Brady left, writes Khari...

Aug 15, 2025 - My life isn’t a rom-com, but I did fall in love with my future husband’s dog first, writes Anna Bruno. Addie is a working dog, and she taught me what it...

Nov 21, 2025 - The development sector's embrace of “resilience” redirected attention away from governments as duty bearers, writes Jehane Sedky, and made it easier...

Jul 25, 2025 - When Ruthie Ackerman first decided to use a donor egg to conceive, she worried there could be a lingering, lifelong wedge between her and her child, because...

Cognoscenti’s goal is to foster understanding and connection about the issues and life experiences that matter most. Join us at our in-person events.

Dec 20, 2024 - We published 245 pieces of original writing in 2024, by nearly as many contributors. In Cog’s best stories of the year, our authors wrote about politics and...

Jesse Jackson widened what

Oct 31, 2025 - Cog editor Cloe Axelson interviewed Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and her dog Bailey, who's dressing up as Stephen Colbert for Halloween this year. They talked...

Jan 8, 2026 - Alissa Quart's mom was sick and her job kept her tethered to a nonstop news cycle. "The pain and desperation I felt when I asked for a reading is...

Jan 14, 2026 - Sexual abuse is largely preventable because child predators are completely predictable, writes Bronwen Carroll, a pediatric emergency medicine physician....

Dec 17, 2025 - Dr. Nancy Rappaport teaches an elective course to Harvard Medical School students that uses literature to help make sense of the experiences they face as...

Dec 2, 2025 - Cruelty and compassion, sin and forgiveness, cowardice and heroism, these are the conjoined twins that, for Mark Twain, structure the rhythms of American...

Oct 11, 2024 - In September, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu performed George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” at Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops. Cognoscenti spoke to her...

Oct 27, 2024 - You couldn’t pay me to watch a scary movie, writes Sara Shukla, but when my 12-year-old became obsessed with them last year, I started to see how sometimes...

Nov 13, 2025 - Texas is hardly the paragon of climate policy, but its energy prices are lower than the national average because it generates so much power from wind and...

Jan 18, 2018 - The perseverance and dignity of Haiti’s people, in the face of unceasing racism, injustice and violence, has strengthened many leaders in the U.S.’s own...

Dec 9, 2025 - Between now and the end of the century, climate change will trigger a cascade of rapid, irreversible environmental changes that will make it impossible for...

Dec 15, 2025 - If you encountered a single child in 2025, you likely heard the phrase six-seven, writes Robert Isenberg, a filmmaker and the father of an 11-year-old boy. As...

May 9, 2025 - The laundry and soccer cleats and bedtime battles are moments of connection – literal minutes and hours – that become less frequent as kids mature. It’s...

Jan 14, 2026 - There is plenty of reason for dismay at the Trump administration's actions over the past year, writes Carol Rose, the executive director of the ACLU of...

Jan 9, 2026 - We have become professionals at care in Minneapolis, writes Maribeth Romslo. We are veterans of showing up. We know what to do when the unthinkable happens: we...

Dec 18, 2025 - Music reminds us of what we’ve lost and what we’ve found, writes Kate Neale Cooper. Where we’ve been, and where we’re going. These are the songs and...

Stories to remind you we’re all part of something bigger.

Jun 16, 2022 - During the first pandemic winter, Miles Howard did a lot of walking around Boston. The experience inspired him to plot a 25-mile urban trail -- the Walking...

Jan 6, 2026 - What happens when massive numbers of people think they know more about a subject or are better at something than they actually are? Joelle Renstrom says...

Jan 15, 2025 - I lost many things in the LA fires, writes Andrea Meyer. My home, the pictures taken by my photojournalist grandfather after World War II and my grandma’s...

Jul 9, 2024 - Jacob Collier's music isn't easy to understand, writes Chris Ritter. But to be nerdy isn’t so much to know things as it is to be excited about the...

Join us for a panel conversation exploring how divorce has shifted over the years and how to navigate its emotional complexities.