“Eating, even eating junk food—sometimes especially eating junk food—is not just a good idea but potentially the difference between life and death, or at the very least the difference between an enjoyable experience and a grueling one. No one has ever opened up a packet of Oreos on a mountaintop and said, ‘I’m being so bad.’” […]
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Best of 2023: Profiles
The profiles we loved in 2023 cover a Uvalde mom turned gun-control advocate, Ginni and Clarence Thomas, a love letter to Louisiana and two unrelated women born there in 1953, the man behind the Twitter persona “Dril,” and an underdog surfer nicknamed “Casual Luke.”
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 […]
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 […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
We’re showcasing work by Kate Wagner, Fintan O’Toole, Rowan Jacobsen, Tamara Kneese, and Susan Dominus.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
The April 12 edition features stories by Stephanie McCrummen, Mark Warren, Trina Moyles, Laura Preston, and Jack King.
Rabbit Holes Aplenty and the Week’s Top 5
“What could have fizzled out as a weekend infatuation turned into a full-blown obsession, an online epic quest. After the festival, I decided that a dulcimer was something I really needed, but I never just need things; I also crave learning about them deeply from the people who already know.” Who among us has never fallen into […]
Abandoned Music Dreams and The Week’s Top 5
“It felt like a homecoming but in retrospect seems more like a goodbye: a last great musical act before leaving that period of my life. It felt romantic, anyway, to record in a barn. We set the drums next to the tractor, tried to coax the chickens into cooing for the microphone, and had a […]


