As we wind towards the top of the 12 months, Vox is looking again with a few of our greatest tales of 2025. To construct this checklist, I took suggestions from my colleagues for his or her favorites and tried to provide you a variety of subjects to dive into. Whether or not you’re slogging by way of a day of labor or taking a while off, I hope these entertain and inform you. Right here they’re, offered in no explicit order:
1. We’ve unlocked a holy grail in clear vitality. It’s solely the start. by Umair Irfan
In April, Umair Irfan reported on one of the hopeful clear vitality tales of the 12 months: actually large batteries. New grid-scale batteries, he writes, are a key ingredient to harnessing the potential of wind and photo voltaic vitality, in addition to a much-needed enchancment to America’s archaic grid: “the peanut butter to the chocolate of renewable vitality, making all the very best traits about clear vitality even higher and balancing out a few of its downsides.”
2. Most animals on this island nation are discovered nowhere else on Earth. And now they’re vanishing. by Benji Jones and Paige Vega
It’s doable that nobody at Vox has had a extra fascinating 12 months 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 coated the crises going through Madagascar’s coral reefs, lemurs, and chameleons — and the way conservation efforts can succeed by addressing financial wants as properly.
3. What podcasts do to our brains by Adam Clark Estes
Adam Clark Estes has carried out a lot wonderful work this 12 months about the way in which tech rewires our brains and how you can struggle 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 once we’re consistently listening to podcasts as we transfer by way of 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 every part taking place on the well being beat this 12 months, it’s a miracle my colleague Dylan Scott has had time to assist co-host the At present, Defined e-newsletter as properly. One way or the other he has, although, and he additionally squeezed in a significant scoop this September: He obtained the conclusions of a significant alcohol examine that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Well being and Human Providers 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: People drank much less in 2025.)
5. The most definitely AI apocalypse by Eric Levitz
2025 was, sadly, a giant 12 months for reckoning with the risks of AI. It’s a dreary beat, however Eric Levitz did it greatest with this story about one doable apocalypse: what he describes as “totally 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.
6. Their democracy died. They’ve classes for America about Trump’s energy seize. by Zack Beauchamp
My colleague Zack Beauchamp has carried out unbelievable work protecting the Trump administration’s assault on democracy this 12 months, drawing from his years of expertise protecting different nations’ backsliding. Nearly a 12 months into Trump 2.0, his February story concerning the parallels between Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán — and the teachings People ought to take from Hungary’s disaster — remains to be a significant roadmap.
7. A magical world on the ocean’s edge from Vox’s Unexplainable podcast
Vox’s Unexplainable podcast is persistently 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 possibly can management, even when large issues like local weather change really feel impossibly laborious to understand, and to maintain appreciating magnificence as you discover it. It’s the right episode to hold into 2026.
8. The good American basic we’ve been misreading for 100 years by Constance Grady
Constance Grady marked the a hundredth anniversary of the basic 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 basic, partially by way of a collection of accidents. It’s an ideal reminder of what makes a novel many people seemingly haven’t revisited since highschool so timeless.
9. America’s fastest-growing suburbs are about to get very costly by Marina Bolotnikova
Merriam-Webster tells us that the phrase of the 12 months in 2025 was “slop” — however “affordability” could be one of many runners-up, no less than in US politics (don’t inform Donald Trump). In July, Marina Bolotnikova wrote a couple of urgent story from the frontier of the American housing market, the place America’s spacious, sprawling, reasonably priced 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.
10. Republicans have a Nazi downside from Vox’s At present, Defined podcast
In November, Vox’s At present, Defined podcast coated a late-breaking candidate for one of many greatest tales of the 12 months: The Republican civil battle that has erupted over the occasion’s more and more clear Nazi downside. Co-host Noel King and the complete At present, Defined group expertly break down what’s taking place, how we received right here, and the very excessive stakes for the nation.
Bonus: Don’t let a messy home cease you from internet hosting by Allie Volpe
Along with this article, I additionally host Vox’s The Logoff. Meaning I spend lots of time interested by two issues: Donald Trump, and the very best methods to really log out, flee the web, and reclaim a little bit little bit of mind area from a nonstop information cycle. This story, from Allie Volpe, was one among my favourite Logoff recs of the 12 months: She writes that we must always all cease letting a messy home maintain us from internet hosting, and prioritize spending extra time with our pals as an alternative. I’m going to attempt to do extra of that in 2026, and I hope you do too!
A model of this story initially appeared within the At present, Defined e-newsletter. Enroll right here!
