Living In These Curated Times By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At The Baffler, Thomas Frank looks at the pros and cons and history of what we call “curation.”
The Restless Ghosts of Baiersdorf By Sabine Heinlein Feature A small German town is haunted by its Jewish legacy and antisemitic past.
Rebecca Solnit Explains Things–Expertly By Sari Botton Highlight Rebecca Solnit is expert at crystalizing common experiences in such a way that lays bare deeply ingrained patriarchal influences
A Slice of Cake and a Tip Lead to a Portrait of Addiction in Ohio By Michelle Legro Commentary New York Times reporter Jack Healy was sitting in a diner when he received a tip about a father who had lost two of his three adult children to opioid overdoses.
Falling in Love with Words: The Secret Life of a Lexicographer By Longreads Feature Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper describes how she fell in love with words and offers a peek into the complex process of making dictionaries.
The Fuzzy Chinese Face That Transcends Political Divisions By Michelle Weber Highlight Carl Swanson investigated the Panda Ball — a hoity toity event geared to raising $50 million to ensconce a pair of pandas in New York’s Central Park.
Welcome to Mars, Sorry About the Face-Melting! By Michelle Weber Highlight The Red Planet presents scientists with kinks they’ll need to figure out before you can book a shuttle.
A Conversation With Ariel Levy About Writing a Memoir That Avoids ‘Invoking Emotional Tropes’ By Jessica Gross Feature The New Yorker staff writer on her new memoir, ‘The Rules Do Not Apply.’
Pivoting Away from Lung Cancer By Michelle Weber Highlight Big Tobacco takes a page from the Silicon Valley playbook: Welcome to the world of alternative nicotine platforms.
Mixing Business and Family in the LA Lakers Empire By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At ESPN, Ramona Shelburne tells the complex family drama between the president and other stakeholders, which include her siblings.
The Outdoorsy Type’s Dilemma By Ben Huberman Highlight At the Guardian, Marisa Meltzer looks at the self-congratulatory corporate philosophies of Patagonia and The North Face.
The Most Amazing Chef You’ve Never Heard of is a Zen Buddhist Nun By Krista Stevens Highlight Jeong Kwan has no restaurant, no customers, and no cookbooks, yet her vegan cuisine earns rave reviews from Michelin-star chefs.
RAWR! What’s Happening to Me? The Truth is Out There (About Menopause) By Krista Stevens Highlight Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel speak frankly about perimenopause and menopause to destigmatize the flow and ebb of the female reproductive cycle.
He Learned it All on Google and YouTube: How to Become a Gold Smuggler By Krista Stevens Highlight Want to become an international gold smuggler? Harold Vilches started his life of crime with a Google search for gold dealers in Peru and YouTube videos on how to make your own gold ingots.
LOL, JFK: The Hot Mess That Is U.S. Immigration Law By Michelle Weber Highlight Immigration lawyer Matt Cameron writes in The Baffler, laying bare the inequities, misconceptions, and plain messiness that characterize U.S. immigration law.
Oh, Give Me a Home Where the Woolly Mammoths Roam By Michelle Weber Highlight Ross Andersen’s captivating profile of Nikita Zimov and his quest to re-create a Pleistocene ecosystem is worth reading, not least for a fascinating explanation of how grasses went from being slimy ocean plants to covering huge swaths of the planet.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories by Sarah Menkedick, Adam Davidson, Ross Andersen, Victor Luckerson, and Tara Murtha.
‘When Neanderthals Disappeared From Here, We Became the Sole Inheritors of Our Continent’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight In Gibraltar, science writer Gaia Vince discovers that analyzing the genetics of ancient humans means changing ideas about our evolution.
Why Populism Will Not Make America Great: The Making of a Mexican-American Dream By Krista Stevens Highlight Sarah Menkedick suggests that America has everything to lose if it can’t reject the resurgence of nativist (white) populism to embrace this generation of smart, ambitious, second-generation Mexican Americans.
R.E.M.’s Political Songs Still Resonate Today By Matt Giles Commentary The band was never afraid to push social activism through their music.
Weight Loss Does Not Cure Depression: How the World’s Heaviest Man Lost it All By Krista Stevens Highlight Paul Mason lost 700 lbs. after bariatric surgery and finds happiness elusive; dramatic weight loss does nothing to treat the underlying depression and emotional trauma that caused him to eat to excess in the first place.
‘There Was a Lot of Spontaneous Crying’: Chrissy Teigen on Her Postpartum Depression By Sari Botton Highlight Model, television host, and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen wrote a personal essay for Glamour, in which she confesses to having postpartum depression.
‘I Am Not a Role Model’ and the Resurgence of Athlete Activism By Matt Giles Commentary More athletes are publicly taking a political stance, echoing activists who came before them.
Where Cult Fame and Real-Life Tragedy Intersect: ‘Zelda: Majora’s Mask’ By Krista Stevens Highlight How an alternate, fan-made, sinister storyline for Zelda: Majora’s Mask called Ben Drowned connects to the online suicide of 12-year-old Katelyn Davis.
The Face of Mass Deportation By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At Guernica, journalist J. Malcolm Garcia profiles forty-eight-year-old Sixto Paz, a roofer with a family and no criminal record who moved into a church to avoid deportation.
Uncommon Ancestry: Your Dad is My Dad? By Krista Stevens Highlight Alison Motluk writes on how fertility doctors impregnating their own clients is more common than you might think, and on how the law around tracking sperm donors and donations is impotent against the problem.
Mars Needs Women… Scientists By Pam Mandel Highlight At the top of the SLS will be the Orion, the capsule designed to take astronauts—men and, yes, now women—as far as Mars (come the 2030s).
The Relentless Relevance of ‘9 to 5’ By Sari Botton Highlight An recent interview with Patricia Resnick, author of the screenplay for the 1980 film “9 to 5,” on how little had really changed for women by 2015.
On Bearing Witness: Saving Chickens, Saving Myself By Krista Stevens Highlight Christine Hyung-Oak Lee reflects on seeing and “being seen” — the silent gift of bearing witness to one another and individual suffering as a way of offering comfort and hope.
‘Wir Schaffen Das’: Angela Merkel, the Refugee Crisis, and the Complexity Behind a Simple Statement Like ‘We Will Do It’ By Michelle Weber Highlight In Lapham’s Quarterly, Renata Adler returns to her familial homeland to explore Germany’s present-day reaction to the millions of people now trying to get in rather than out.
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