Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed journey to the South Pole captivated the world. But hidden within the legend was a story that has never been told—a love affair between two of the crew who survived.
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Posted inUncategorized
Fit to Be Tied (and the Week’s Top 5)
“When most of us build or buy a home, we carefully appraise the neighborhood. In Malibu the neighborhood is fire. Fire that revisits the coastal mountains several times a decade. In the past sixty years, ten of these frequent events have turned into all-consuming firestorms.” Welcome to 2025, friends. Peter here. As it does all too often, […]
Posted inUncategorized
A Triumphant Solo Trip and Our Weekly Top 5
“Milan raised me to believe I could do and be anything. To have had that and to have lost it might be worse than never having had it at all.” Welcome to the weekend, friends! To kickstart your reading, let Kristina Kasparian’s fierce new essay whisk you away to Italy. In “Flying Solo,” she returns […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we have stories from Christopher Johnston and Erin Quinlan, Dan McQuade, Crystal Wilkinson, Simon Akam, and Nicholson Baker.
Posted inUncategorized
Shifting Identity, Shamans, and the Week’s Top 5
“So long as there are nations, there will be people trying to get out of them, tracking ceaselessly from one to the other while maybe wishing they could belong to the world instead.” In making a cross-country move recently, I realized that I can be a different person in a new place. There’s a certain […]
Posted inFeature
The Mostly True Story of America’s First Black Private Investigator
He made his name in Chicago investigating racial violence, solving crimes, and exposing corruption. But America’s first Black private detective was hiding secrets of his own.
Posted inCrime, Feature, Story, The Atavist Magazine
‘What’s the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done?’
In Scott Kimball, the FBI thought it had found a high-value informant who could help solve big cases. What it got instead was lies, betrayal, and murder.
Posted inNonfiction
A Sketch Artist, a Grieving Mother, and An Unsolved Mystery
They set out to solve a cold case. The more they dug, the more terrifying the truth became.
Posted inNewsletter
A near-death experience and our Top 5 stories of the week
“My boating experience was minimal and that section of river was not for beginners, but I had scraped by enough times that my risk assessment was dangerously off-kilter. It was a really, really bad combination.” Congratulations—we made it to the weekend! We’ve got some unforgettable stories for you this week. First, Maggie Slepian recounts her […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Ilya Kaminsky on Ukrainian, Russian, and the Language of War
In this excerpt from a 2017 essay, the poet Ilya Kaminsky reflects on Russian aggression against Ukraine and considers, among many things, one scholar’s refusal to speak Russian in his classroom as a form of protest. “I couldn’t stop thinking about Boris’s refusal to speak his own language as an act of protest against the […]
