Listing the Lists

Officially: a search engine. Unofficially: where you check spellings you're embarrassed about, stalk your ex, and diagnose your symptoms into rare diseases.

The largest compendium of human knowledge ever assembled, written mostly by enthusiasts at 2 a.m. You will start looking up Napoleon and end up reading about the taxonomy of sea cucumbers.

Began as a place to share funny cat videos. Is now where you learn to fix a carburetor, watch a 4-hour documentary about competitive jigsaw puzzling, or fall down a conspiracy rabbit hole.

Five thousand communities arguing about everything. Somewhere in there is a subreddit dedicated exclusively to pictures of cats that look like rugs, and it has 200,000 members.

The library at the end of the universe. They're saving the internet so our grandchildren can see what a GeoCities page looked like. Heroic, thankless, essential.

70,000 books, free forever, no account needed. Dickens, Austen, Dostoevsky — yours immediately.

Curated long-form journalism from every major publication. What the internet looks like when it takes its time.

Maria Popova has been writing about books, ideas, and what it means to be alive for 15 years. Not a single bad sentence.

Philosophy, psychology, and science essays written for actual humans. Free, thoughtful, rigorous.

166 years old and still the best place to read a long argument made with full commitment to being right.

Jason Kottke has been linking to interesting things since 1998. The original link blog, still the best one.

Science writing where the scientists sound like writers and the writers have done the homework.

Aeon's companion site focused on psychology and the inner life. Practical without being self-help.

The canonical authority on what to read next, since 1896. Also the only book review section that sparks genuine arguments.

Free courses, films, audiobooks, and lectures from the world's top universities. The best free education on the internet.

The original dedicated list site. Top 10 everything, since 2007. Dark, weird, occasionally educational. A Wikipedia rabbit hole but with better formatting and worse sourcing.

Lists you can vote on. The democratic approach to ranking. Results are occasionally baffling, which makes them more honest than most.

Trivia lists done with actual journalism. "25 things you didn't know about X" but the 25 things are genuinely interesting and not made up.

Lists as quizzes. Name all the countries of Europe in five minutes. You can't. Nobody can. That's the point. An extremely effective way to lose an afternoon.

Pure facts, listed obsessively. 1,000 random facts about animals. 500 things about space. Their SEO is aggressive but their facts are solid.

Yes, fine. They invented the modern listicle and the internet has never forgiven them. But "26 Photos That Prove Dogs Are Better Than People" has its place. We're not here to judge.

The best restaurants, bars, museums, and experiences in every major city on earth, ranked by people who actually went. Bookmark this before you travel anywhere.

Every possible book list, voted on by millions of readers. "Best books to read while eating soup alone" is a real list and it has 400 entries. This is peak human achievement.