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As we wind towards the top of the yr, Vox is looking again with a few of our greatest tales of 2025. To construct this record, I took suggestions from my colleagues for his or her favorites and tried to provide you a variety of matters to dive into. Whether or not you’re slogging by a day of labor or taking a while off, I hope these entertain and inform you. Right here they’re, introduced in no specific order:

In April, Umair Irfan reported on one of the vital hopeful clear power tales of the yr: actually massive batteries. New grid-scale batteries, he writes, are a key ingredient to harnessing the potential of wind and photo voltaic power, in addition to a much-needed enchancment to America’s archaic grid: “the peanut butter to the chocolate of renewable power, making all the most effective traits about clear power even higher and balancing out a few of its downsides.”

It’s potential that nobody at Vox has had a extra fascinating yr than my colleague Benji Jones, who reported this unbelievable package deal of three tales from the island nation of Madagascar, shortly earlier than the nation’s authorities was overthrown in a army coup. Benji lined the crises going through Madagascar’s coral reefs, lemurs, and chameleons — and the way conservation efforts can succeed by addressing financial wants as nicely.

Adam Clark Estes has carried out a lot wonderful work this yr about the best way tech rewires our brains and the way to combat again (together with experimenting on himself and briefly ruining his life within the course of). However this story, concerning the significance of silence and what we miss out on after we’re consistently listening to podcasts as we transfer by the world, could be my favourite. I do know it’s the one that can most affect my listening — or not listening — in 2026.

With all the things occurring on the well being beat this yr, it’s a miracle my colleague Dylan Scott has had time to assist co-host the Right this moment, Defined publication as nicely. In some way he has, although, and he additionally squeezed in a serious scoop this September: He obtained the conclusions of a serious alcohol examine that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Well being and Human Companies Division tried to bury, which discovered new proof linking alcohol consumption to most cancers mortality. (Vox’s Bryan Walsh has some excellent news about that, although: Individuals drank much less in 2025.)

2025 was, sadly, a giant yr for reckoning with the risks of AI. It’s a dreary beat, however Eric Levitz did it finest with this story about one potential apocalypse: what he describes as “absolutely automated neofeudalism,” the place AI helps safe the ability of a small caste of oligarchical elites over all the remainder of us. The excellent news, he writes, is we’re not there but — and similar to A Christmas Carol’s Ebenezer Scrooge, there’s nonetheless time to stave off that future.

My colleague Zack Beauchamp has carried out unbelievable work masking the Trump administration’s assault on democracy this yr, drawing from his years of expertise masking different international locations’ backsliding. Nearly a yr into Trump 2.0, his February story concerning the parallels between Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán — and the teachings Individuals ought to take from Hungary’s disaster — remains to be an important roadmap.

Vox’s Unexplainable podcast is constantly enjoyable and engaging, however this episode from July, produced by Byrd Pinkerton, packs a sneaky emotional punch too. She tells the story of the tide swimming pools she loves on the California shoreline: how local weather change is impacting their delicate ecosystem, and the way the researchers who love them too are coping with that change. The episode ends with a reminder to maintain specializing in the issues you’ll be able to management, even when massive issues like local weather change really feel impossibly arduous to understand, and to maintain appreciating magnificence as you discover it. It’s the proper episode to hold into 2026.

Constance Grady marked the a hundredth anniversary of the traditional novel The Nice Gatsby with this account of how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal story got here to be and the way it has been cemented as an all-time traditional, partly by a sequence of accidents. It’s an ideal reminder of what makes a novel many people probably haven’t revisited since highschool so timeless.

Merriam-Webster tells us that the phrase of the yr in 2025 was “slop” — however “affordability” could be one of many runners-up, a minimum of in US politics (don’t inform Donald Trump). In July, Marina Bolotnikova wrote a few urgent story from the frontier of the American housing market, the place America’s spacious, sprawling, inexpensive suburbs are about to succeed in their outer restrict — and get very costly. To repair it, she argues, it could be time to look to the Abundance playbook, in 2026 and past.

In November, Vox’s Right this moment, Defined podcast lined a late-breaking candidate for one of many largest tales of the yr: The Republican civil battle that has erupted over the occasion’s more and more clear Nazi drawback. Co-host Noel King and your complete Right this moment, Defined staff expertly break down what’s occurring, how we bought right here, and the very excessive stakes for the nation.

Along with this article, I additionally host Vox’s The Logoff. Which means I spend a whole lot of time desirous about two issues: Donald Trump, and the most effective methods to truly sign off, flee the web, and reclaim a bit of little bit of mind area from a nonstop information cycle. This story, from Allie Volpe, was one among my favourite Logoff recs of the yr: She writes that we must always all cease letting a messy home hold us from internet hosting, and prioritize spending extra time with our buddies as a substitute. I’m going to attempt to do extra of that in 2026, and I hope you do too!

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