“If I’d felt more confident on the route, if he hadn’t made that comment, if we’d been communicating more, would I have pushed for another day off? If, if, if.”
Search results
The Skeleton, the Meat, and the Bones: A Chat With the Writer and Editor Behind The Atavist’s New Issue
In this excerpt from The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, host Brendan O’Meara talks to Jana Meisenholder about writing “King of the Hill.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending reads from David A. Taylor, Rebecca Solnit, Nicholas Russell, D.T. Max, and Jori Lewis.
The Search for Answers, and the Week’s Top 5
We become better in many ways, but it’s the best writers who give us the information and context required to do so, and let us do the work to get there.
A “Super” Walk of Contradictions (and Our Top 5)
“To my right is one of the largest manmade toxic holes on Earth. To my left, shelves of coal-colored slag piled twenty feet high. And underfoot, ten thousand miles of poisoned shafts swimming with ghosts.” Hello from Berkeley, California. Our family loves to explore the city’s parks, where we can hike through redwood forests in […]
Brains, Bonobos, and the Top 5 Reads of the Week
“Your doctors tell you that you have your whole life to recover, but also that you have a window of just six months when your brain is most primed to relearn everything you’ve forgotten. So, no pressure. Your brain can’t regenerate the neurons it’s lost. Use ’em or lose ’em. You had no idea your […]
A Water Obsession and Our Weekly Top 5
“The majority of home water use takes place in the bathroom, so that’s where I started. I scaled back my showers to once a week and only flushed the toilet when the need was overwhelming. I wandered my dark little apartment doing calculations on a loop. How many gallons of water does the Livingston faucet […]
Our Year in Reading and the Week’s Top 5
Every story changes our mind in some small way. They’re already in implicit conversation with one another, and our “Year in Reading” series acknowledges that.
Interspecies Communication, An Ultra-Incredible Recovery, and Our Top 5
“From the mycelial ‘wood wide web’ to smart slime molds and political honeybees, science is demonstrating that humans don’t monopolize language or intelligence.” With advancements in artificial intelligence, scientists are learning more about the ways non-human species communicate with each other—and how they might communicate with us. In this week’s new reading list, “Wild Talk,” Sam […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Paula Lavigne and Tom Junod, Lex Pryor, Sarah Treleaven, Zack Graham, and Laura Jedeed.


