How Taylor Swift reflects every possible version of ourselves.
Search results
What Neko Case taught me about curation and the week’s Top 5
“When the media covered women in the grunge and alternative scene, it treated them like a genre unto itself. This genre, though, received almost no in-depth profiles or features.” Books are one of the great joys in my life. The other is music. I’ve been following singer songwriter Neko Case since 1997, after picking up […]
Stories on Shady Science (and Our Top 5)
“On one hand, it’s critical to root out research fraud and serious errors. On the other hand, highlighting the most dramatic outliers risks creating the impression that science as a whole can’t be trusted.” When I told my 7-year-old daughter that the recent viral clip of bunnies jumping on a trampoline was fake, she looked […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we’re highlighting stories from Yuval Abraham, Paul Tough, Leslie Jamison, Melina Moe, and Meg Bernhard.
The Sexfluencers
“What is new is how seamlessly a DM slide can become a business arrangement, how influencers of the Instagram-lifestyle variety and regular people alike have used this as a meaningful stream of revenue. Thanks to a pandemic that left many people at home substituting screens for IRL intimacy and the rise of platforms that merge […]
Sandlot Baseball as Social Glue (and More Top 5 Reads)
Finding community in sandlot ball (and our Top 5).
The Dark and Stormy Tale of a ShantyTok Band
When a scraggly band of folk musicians arrived to tour the UK, residents of a small Welsh town were enamored—until they learned that the band’s leader ruled with an iron fist.
“Who the Fuck Cares About Adam McKay?” (We Do, and With Good Reason)
“But success, as we’re obliged to say in the personal-profiles business, has come at a price—bouts of depression, a heart attack, a rotating cast of therapists, a tortured relationship with his mother, and a bitter breakup with his former creative partner Will Ferrell. As it turns out, every movie is the most personal movie Adam […]
The Very Public Library, Food as Fuel, and Our Top 5
“It’s our least popular and most enforced rule: we don’t allow people to sleep in the library. We know you’re tired, we know it’s warm, we know it feels safe. But someone who is dying also looks like someone who is sleeping, and we’ve all seen our share of overdoses. Also, if one person is […]
Reading Lists, The Staff Who Gave It All, and Our Top 5
“My uncle was one of the lucky ones who, in a new city, found community and love from people outside the medical complex—people who had no reason to provide it other than the purity of their hearts.” Another week has rolled by, and once again, we are here to offer you your weekend reading! This […]


