‘Nothing Kept Me Up At Night the Way the Gorgon Stare Did.’ By Sam Jaffe Goldstein Feature The Gorgon Stare, a military drone-surveillance technology that can track multiple moving targets at once, is coming to a city near you.
Yentl Syndrome: A Deadly Data Bias Against Women By Longreads Feature The science of medicine is based on male bodies, but researchers are beginning to realize how vastly the symptoms of disease differ between the sexes — and how much danger women are in.
This Month In Books: ‘Look at the World, and Not at the Mirror.’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is about seeing the big picture.
‘The Underland Is a Deeply Human Realm’: Getting Down with Robert Macfarlane By Tobias Carroll Feature “I thought the underland would be — of all the landscape forms that have drawn me to explore them — the most uninhabited. This proved wildly incorrect.”
‘Brokenness and Holiness Really Go Together’: Darcey Steinke on Menopause By Jane Ratcliffe Feature Darcey Steinke says that most menopause memoirs “end with this come-to-Jesus moment of, ‘Then I accepted hormones.’ I’m not against it, but … I wanted to hear what it’s like for other women.”
Time To Kill the Rabbit? By Lily Meyer Feature In two new novels, the bunnies are anything but cute. (Unless … you use magic to turn one of them into a pre-TB Keats, or a talky Tim Riggins.)
We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Very Beginning By Longreads Feature Early electric cars performed better in cities than internal combustion vehicles, but didn’t give riders the same illusion of freedom and masculine derring-do.
‘They Happen To Be Our Neighbors Across the Span of a Century, But They’re Our Neighbors.’ By Adam Morgan Feature One hundred summers ago, black Chicagoans were terrorized by whites during the Red Summer. Poet Eve Ewing talks about reaching out to her neighbors across time in “1919.”
William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll By Longreads Feature From Bob Dylan to David Bowie to The Beatles, the legendary Beat writer’s influence reached beyond literature into music in surprising ways.
Demonology: A Woman’s Right to Fury By Longreads Feature In an excerpt from her new book, Darcey Steinke investigates — and debunks — the demonization of anger within the female body.
‘If Any of My Old Friends Are Reading This, It Is Okay Out Here.’ By Jacqueline Alnes Feature Amber Scorah talks about committing the one unforgiveable sin: believing, then not believing.
How the Cosby Story Finally Went Viral — And Why It Took So Long By Longreads Feature A journalist who reported on the accusations long before they went viral wonders, “What kind of profession am I in, where stories have no logical reason for unfolding?”
Kristen Arnett on Taxidermy, Memory, and “Mostly Dead Things” By Tobias Carroll Feature “What’s considered high art? What’s lowbrow? What are those things? That’s something that, as a person who like, lives at 7-Eleven, I’m extremely interested in.”
True Roots By Longreads Feature One woman quits coloring her gray hair and investigates the human and environmental costs of this contentious female beauty standard.
I’ve Done a Lot of Forgetting By Jordan Michael Smith Feature When I was a kid, I wanted my antisemitic tormentors to accept me. I wanted to be their friend.
America Is Still Hard To Find By Lily Meyer Feature Kathleen Alcott’s latest novel is a dramatic reenactment of the ethical dilemmas posed in antiwar activist Father Daniel Berrigan’s ’60s manifesto.
Total Depravity: The Origins of the Drug Epidemic in Appalachia Laid Bare By Longreads Feature In an excerpt from his essay collection, Australian journalist Richard Cooke reports on the American opioid crisis through the astonished eyes of a foreigner visiting steel and coal country.
Odetta Holmes’ Album One Grain of Sand By Longreads Feature The singular singer released her groundbreaking album in 1963, the same year as the March on Washington, and used her art and appearance as weapons in the Civil Rights struggle.
Reimagining Harper Lee’s Lost True Crime Novel: An Interview with Casey Cep By Adam Morgan Feature “Somewhere along the way it became very clear to me that I was writing the book she never would.”
There Is No Other Way To Say This By Melissa Batchelor Warnke Feature “Tell them on the outside,” Carolyn Forché’s Salvadoran mentor instructed her. Her memoir is her latest attempt. Its elliptical lyricism, like that of her poetry, runs circles around censorship.
This Month In Books: ‘What Creates That Need To Leap?’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter has one foot out the door.
Technology Is as Biased as Its Makers By Longreads Feature From exploding Ford Pintos to racist algorithms, all harmful technologies are a product of unethical design. Yet, like car companies in the ’70s, today’s tech companies would rather blame the user.
High Expectations: LSD, T.C. Boyle’s Women, and Me By Christine Ro Feature “Outside Looking In” dramatizes the discovery of LSD and the cult of personality surrounding Timothy Leary. Our reviewer drops acid and thinks about how, for women, it can be safer to be a downer.
I Entered the World’s Longest, Loneliest Horse Race on a Whim, and I Won By Longreads Feature Somehow, implausibly, against all the odds, I became the youngest person and first woman ever to win the Mongol Derby. What made me so sure I was ready, when I was totally unprepared?
‘The Home Is a Place as Wild as Any in the World.’ By Alex Madison Feature Chia-Chia Lin talks about the wildness of domestic spaces and writing her novel “The Unpassing” through the early months of motherhood.
Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail By Suzanne Roberts Feature During a month hiking Muir’s “Range of Light,” three young women traversed snowy mountain passes, ran out of food, confronted a gendered wilderness, and learned to deal with each other.
The Growing Power of Prosecutors By Hope Reese Feature An unintended consequence of mandatory minimums has been to concentrate too much power in the hands of prosecutors. Journalist Emily Bazelon talks about how some cities are pushing back.
The Age of Forever Crises By Linda Kinstler Feature We need to learn how to talk about our irreversible mistakes. Historian Kate Brown says the first step is to resist the Chernobylization of knowledge.
Prince of the Midwest By Longreads Feature For one Wisconsin farm boy, Minneapolis will always be the city of Purple Rain.
The Women Characters Rarely End Up Free: Remembering Rachel Ingalls By Ruby Brunton Feature The recently re-appreciated novelist Rachel Ingalls passed away last month. She was among a cohort of twentieth-century women writers who were ‘famous for not being famous.’
