Recent editors’ picks

Night Knowledge

Aria Aber | The Yale Review | March 16, 2026 | 4,249 words

“What I learned at the club.”

The Docteur Is In

David Beal | The New York Review of Books | March 11, 2026 | 8,091 words

“The Congolese rumba pioneer Docteur Nico helped define the sound of African decolonization—and became one of the great visionaries of the electric guitar.”

Thinking in the Margins

Bill Hayes | The American Scholar | March 2, 2026 | 2,229 words

“What Oliver Sacks jotted down in the books he read.”

Degrees of Separation

Maya Rosen | Jewish Currents | November 2, 2025 | 5,305 words

“Israel’s new international college programs offer American students an escape from campus activism while training them as state cheerleaders.”

In Search of Banksy

Simon Gardner, James Pearson, and Blake Morrison | Reuters | March 13, 2026 | 5,911 words

“The British street artist’s identity has been debated, and closely guarded, for decades. A quest to solve the riddle took Reuters from a bombed-out Ukrainian village to London and downtown Manhattan—and uncovered much more than a name.”

Jeff Mills Loves to Forget

Russell E. L. Butler | Pioneer Works Broadcast | March 11, 2026 | 3,316 words

“How techno’s most vaunted architect is still building sonic futures.”

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Recommending stories by Gaby Del Valle, Sheila Heti, Chris Pomorski, Louise Bokkenheuser, and Lida Zeitlin-Wu.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Showcasing stories from Eve Fairbanks, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Rochelle L. Johnson, Joseph Winters and Tik Root, and Miles Ellingham.

Recent editors’ picks

The Afterlife of a Stolen Bike

Iain Treloar | Escape Collective | March 5, 2026 | 4,556 words

“22 bikes a day are stolen in Melbourne. I decided to buy one to return it to its rightful owner.”

Beneath the Long White Cloud

Sean Williams | Now Voyager | March 12, 2026 | 5,275 words

“The search for the eighth wonder of the world.”

What 100 Million Volts Do to the Body and Mind

Jacob Stern | The Atlantic | March 16, 2026 | 3,814 words

“The odds of being struck by lightning in America in a given year are one in 1.2 million. How does the experience reorient a person’s sense of chance, of fate?”

Transference in the Afternoon

Jesse Barron | Granta | February 12, 2026 | 8,480 words

“I felt I was looking at something remarkable: a real-time record of the encounter between a patient and a therapist. It was an encounter that started off well before veering profoundly off course.”

The Devil’s Crown

Traci Brimhall | Virginia Quarterly Review | February 12, 2026 | 2,731 words

“The first time I try to visit the devil, I bring my son.”

You Could Be Next

Josh Dzieza | The Verge | March 10, 2026 | 6,404 words

“Laid-off lawyers, history PhDs, and scientists are now part of a miserable gig economy in which they’re teaching AI how to do their old jobs.”

Gout

Jan Steyn | The Dial | March 5, 2026 | 6,026 words

“What the disease taught me about language, inheritance and pain.”

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