“At the ‘magic Olympics,’ magicians from around the world compete to be deemed the world’s best. To win, they must fool each other.”
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Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending excellent stories by Charlotte Higgins, Lex Pryor, Michael Hardy, Elissa Altman, and Brad Phillips.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Plot to Kill the Olympics
“Just as the pandemic inspired political and social change the world over, so, during the course of 2020, did many of the bigger Olympic sports experience a quiet remaking.”
Posted inUncategorized
Learning to Walk Again (and Our Top 5)
“The average U.S. public school has about 550 students. Imagine eight or nine schools in an area roughly the size of Philadelphia where every kid is missing at least one limb. Imagine also that their amputations happened alongside a torrent of other tragedies: the loss of family members, friends, neighbors, schools, houses.” In the latest issue of […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: January begins, finding beauty, powerful blues, toxic water, and begonia batons.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Cold Warrior: Why Eileen Gu Ditched Team USA to Ski for China
“Over the next four months, as her classmates fretted over sophomore prom and physics tests, Gu agonised about which superpower to represent in the 2022 Olympics.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Against Winning
“What I am qualified to say—what I am saying: what links the evils of the modern Olympics to literary criticism, to literary prizes and to A-to-F classroom grades—is that I’m tired of losing and tired of winning, and that we all lose when we focus so often on prizes, grades, and final scores.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Meet the Lobbyist Next Door
What do a Real Housewife, an Olympic athlete, and a doula have in common? They’re all being paid by an ad-tech startup as influencers — peddling not products but ideologies: Like baseball, selling influence is a pastime that rarely gets reinvented. There are only so many ways to get a person to do the thing […]
Posted inNewsletter
Loneliness, Power, and the Top 5 of the Week
“Heartbreak makes for a delicious spectacle, from afar.” “I want to be left alone, but I don’t want to be lonely.” Hanif Abdurraqib writes this about a tension that dominated the career of singer Phyllis Hyman—but it also feels like a familiar plea in this dim, early-January week, when many of us leave the chaos of […]
