Featuring stories from Jenisha Watts, Aymann Ismail and Mary Harris, Elizabeth Kolbert, Wyatt Williams, and Jackson Wald.
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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 […]
Why the 9/11 Families May Never Get Closure
LSS: Because Trump wants to be pals with Saudi crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman.
The Race That Turned to Ruin
“Fifteen teams lifted off from Switzerland in gas ballooning’s most audacious race. Three days later, two of them drifted into Belarusian airspace—but only one would survive.”
When the Hit Man Starts Talking
“A former FBI agent traveled to Louisiana to ask a hired killer about a murder that haunted him. Then they started talking about a different case altogether.”
What Are Memories, Anyway?
The brain is a funny thing. You give it the right cues of depth and immersion, and something that would otherwise be a memory of an image becomes a memory of an experience.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition, we recommend stories from Eli Saslow, Mitchell S. Jackson, Adam Ciralsky, Heidi Lasher, and Noah Rawlings.
Seeing is Believing: A Reading List on Making Meaning from Data
Eight stories on the power and beauty of visual communication.
A Colorful Addition and the Week’s Top 5
“Humans are besotted with color and we always have been. We love it so much we will breathe it, eat it, drink it, and look at it until our eyes roll back in our heads. We will paint with it, paint the world with it, paint ourselves with it. We will go to the ends […]
(Alleged) Kings of the Con and the Week’s Top 5
“[T]he most compelling tales of grift aren’t the ones that depend on technology: the bottomless library of fraud-ready photos; the platforms that let anyone claim to be an epidemiologist or electoral fraud whistleblower; the software that can plop your face onto another person’s. No, the tales that captivate us most almost always reveal a person’s longing.” […]


