The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week.
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Below, our favorite stories of the week.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

George Pendle | Atlas Obscura | September 2016 | 17 minutes (4,425 words)
Our latest Exclusive is a new story by George Pendle, co-funded by Longreads Members and published by Atlas Obscura.In a serpentine building that snakes through the Connecticut countryside, a strange meeting took place this past July. A group of four scientists from NASA, including an astronaut, a robotics expert, and the agency’s deputy administrator, conferred with some 30 painters, sculptors and poets. Adding an extra layer of mystery to proceedings was the fact that the meeting was hosted by Grace Farms, a faith-based think-tank created by an evangelical hedge-fund billionaire.
Tea was served. Thomas Pynchon may or may not have been present.
The aim of this odd confluence was to engage an “artistic response” to NASA’s journey to Mars, the space agency’s ambitious goal of putting a human on the red planet’s surface sometime in the 2030s. To help set the mood, NASA brought some zappy toys to share—a Hololens headset that offered an augmented reality view of Mars, as well as surreal images of winds carving the Martian surface. According to those present, scientists spoke of the necessity of having “an outpost” on Mars to help solve the many riddles of the galaxy. The question they were asking the assembled artists was whether they could help communicate this vision to the public as part of a new program entitled “Arts + Mars”.
Some of the artists were left scratching their heads. Many of them, schooled in the ambiguities and anti-authoritarian verities of contemporary art, saw NASA’s open call for guileless propaganda as being entirely at odds with the art they practice. “The conversation about art was at such a naïve level,” said one attendee, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of rousing the space agency’s ire. “It just didn’t seem like NASA was that interested in what we had to say.” What’s more the overtly commercial and exploitative language of the Mars boosters—their mentions of partnerships with private industry and “putting tracks on Mars”—did not play well with their youngish, liberal audience. Read more…

Below, our favorite stories of the week.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

Below, our favorite stories of the week.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

Below, our favorite stories of the week.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

Below, our favorite stories of the week.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

Below, our favorite stories of the week.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

Below, our favorite stories of the week.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…

Barry Newman | Longreads | August 2016 | 11 minutes (2,698 words)
My headache arrived just after April Fools’ Day, moving into orbit around my right eye, with side trips to the back of my neck. It was mild as headaches go, but persistent, there at bedtime, still there when I woke up. The previous autumn I’d had a cataract replaced by a wafer of plastic. Now I was in the eye surgeon’s exam chair for my six-month follow-up; this headache was three-weeks old.
Since the operation, I told the surgeon, my eyes seemed to be working to form a single image. “A lack of coordination,” I said. And now my head hurt. She pressed a lacquered fingernail to my forehead. “The headache is here, centered above the brow?” It was. “Maybe it’s from strain.”
“I assume it’s an aneurysm,” I joked. The surgeon said, “It sounds like strain,” and sent me away with the name and phone number of a neuro-ophthalmologist, for an expert opinion. Read more…

Below, our favorite stories of the week.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. Read more…
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