Hey readers,
It’s that time of year. As Future Perfect has in the past, we’re rounding up our most read stories of the year. This little trip down memory lane can give us a sense of the breadth and depth of Future Perfect’s coverage — and a sense of what stories and subjects you, the audience, are most excited by.
This year’s top 10 list features most of our classic subjects, like animal welfare and factory farming, represented by Marina Bolotnikova’s piece on why Thanksgiving is exactly the right day to lose the turkey and go vegan. Our love of attempting to predict the future, as evidenced by our always popular forecast for the new year. And AI safety, as shown by Sigal Samuel and Kelsey Piper’s newsbreaking exposés into OpenAI.
But there were surprises on the list as well, like outside writers Gil Barndollar and Matthew Mai’s prescient warning that America’s military is running short of its most important component: soldiers. Or Dylan Matthews’s fascinating deep dive into the little known State Department intelligence bureau that has a better track record than the CIA when it comes to predicting world events.
This time of year, I’m always grateful both for our amazing staff and slate of outside contributors, and for the attention of our audience — especially those of you who subscribe to this newsletter (and the others we’ve launched this year: Marina and Kenny Torrella’s Processing Meat and Sigal’s ethical advice column Your Mileage May Vary, which comes twice a month via this feed). Here’s to a bigger and better 2025.
1) “Traveling this summer? Maybe don’t let the airline scan your face.” by Sigal Samuel
I’ll reveal a little secret of the journalism biz: timing matters. We published Sigal’s takedown of airport facial screening in the middle of this summer’s record-setting air travel season, as Americans took to the skies again now that Covid was more or less in the rearview mirror. Millions of those fliers probably allowed airlines to scan their faces without thinking, but as Sigal wrote, this is something you can opt out of — and given privacy concerns, something you probably should opt out of. Keep that in mind this holiday season.
2) “You’re probably eating way too much protein” by Kenny Torrella
So I learned two things when this piece came out in January. One, very few of us actually need to hyperload on protein, unless you’re an active bodybuilder. In fact, as Kenny wrote, even without trying, the average American is already eating significantly more protein than dietary guidelines call for, thanks to our meat-heavy diets. And two, our readers have really, really strong opinions about nutritional science. I’m not sure any other single piece this year generated so much feedback.
3) “Kate Middleton says she is cancer free. But why are she and so many young people getting sick?” by Dylan Scott
Here’s another journalism lesson: If you happen to have a deeply reported story about a somewhat obscure health issue — in this case, the rise of certain cancers among young people — definitely make sure you push it out when one of the most famous figures in the world becomes part of that story. Dylan Scott, who was a great addition to Future Perfect this year as an editor and writer, brought a deep well of expertise in health reporting to this story on the rise of colorectal cancer in patients under 50. That it coincided in part with the happy news that the Princess of Wales was now cancer-free helped it reach a much larger audience.
4) “24 things we think will happen in 2024” by the Future Perfect staff
You people just love to read about what we think will happen in the year ahead. (A separate prediction piece that we did for Vox’s 10th anniversary, on 10 things we think will happen over the next 10 years, was also popular.) Why is that? I’d like to think this is because our audience has deep trust in our ability to analyze the trends that help make up the future, but maybe it’s just because you look forward to seeing all the wrong predictions we make. Well, good news! If you come back on December 30, you can see just how well (or badly) we did.
5) “Is oat milk unhealthy? That’s the wrong question.” by Benji Jones
Benj, who can usually be found trekking to colorful locations around the world to document the plight of biodiversity for Vox’s climate section, popped over to Future Perfect in February to dismantle the case against oat milk. As Benji explained, foods shouldn’t be classified through a simple dichotomy of good/bad. And we definitely shouldn’t ignore the impact a food has on the environment or the animals we share it with — and non-dairy oat milk is a winner on both counts.
6) “America isn’t ready for another war — because it doesn’t have the troops” by Gil Barndollar and Matthew C. Mai
One of my goals in 2024 was to make the future of war a bigger part of Future Perfect’s coverage. Whether we like it or not — and I do not — conflict is on the rise, and the technology we use in war is changing rapidly. That’s why I was so happy to see this outside piece from Catholic University senior research fellow Gil Barndollar and Defense Priorities contributing fellow Matthew C. Mai earn such a wide readership. It connects two major trends — demographic change and the rise of global conflict — and shows how they’re intersecting in a way that is dangerous for the US.
7) “8 million turkeys will be thrown in the trash this Thanksgiving” by Marina Bolotnikova
Journalism lesson No. 3: Never let a major holiday go by without capitalizing on audience interest. Factory farming stories over Thanksgiving have become something of a tradition for us, but Marina’s piece was a real tour de force. She began with an unobjectionable premise — Americans don’t actually like turkey that much — and developed it into a call to action for those who care about animal welfare to take back Thanksgiving. Sidesgiving, anyone?
8) “Warren Buffett’s breakup with the Gates Foundation will hurt the world” by Kelsey Piper
Over at Future Perfect, we do our celebrity breakup news a little differently. There is surely delicious gossip behind multibillionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett’s decision to not give away his fortune after his death to the Gates Foundation, as had been long planned. But Kelsey was much more concerned about what would be lost when Buffet’s $137 billion fortune goes to his three adult children, rather than to one of the most effective global health charities ever developed. As she put it: “‘three eccentrics have to agree on how to spend $135 billion’ sounds more like the premise for a sitcom than a process that will accomplish real good with that much money.”
9) “The obscure federal intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right” by Dylan Matthews
Dylan Matthews is currently better known as the guy who started an endless round of discourse about whether it’s ethical to give money to rebuild Notre Dame instead of saving the lives of children. (It is not.) But I know that there is nothing Dylan likes better than to dig deep into an obscure part of the federal government and interview DC elders about what things were like in the old days. That side of Dylan came up with one of my favorite stories of 2024: a profile of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which has put far bigger and better funded intelligence agencies to shame with its oracular predictive powers.
10) “‘I lost trust’: Why the OpenAI team in charge of safeguarding humanity imploded” by Sigal Samuel and “Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees” by Kelsey Piper
I’m cheating slightly by including two stories in one slot, but hey, I’m the editor. The reality is these two stories are deeply connected, part of a series of investigative reports into ChatGPT-maker OpenAI that we put out in May. In the first, Sigal got former OpenAI employees to give her the inside story of how the AI startup’s superalignment team — the people charged with keeping future superintelligence safe — went kaput. In the second, Kelsey Piper received company documents showing that CEO Sam Altman wasn’t being truthful about the way OpenAI was using the threat of blocking equity sales to keep former employees in line. These stories broke news and created real change in perhaps the most important AI company out there. There’s no better example of Future Perfect’s impact on the world in 2024.
—Bryan Walsh
