Prisons such as the California Correctional Center in Susanville, California, drive the local economy in the rural town, and its residents are just as tied to these facilities as the incarcerated ones. Piper French offers a nuanced portrait of the town, as locals in support of CCC, incarcerated organizers on the inside, and urban abolitionist […]
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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 Meaning of Tattoos and Our Top 5 of the Week
“When my father-in-law was growing up in Baltimore and misbehaved in Hebrew school with his friends, their teachers would calmly unbutton their cuffs and roll up their sleeves, revealing their tattoos from Auschwitz. I’ve seen worse, the tattoos said. Or perhaps, This could happen to you.” What does your tattoo mean? It’s a question often asked of […]
Will Speer Found Hope Enough to Share on Texas’s Death Row
“He’s one of the first faith-based coordinators for Texas inmates facing the death penalty. He’s scheduled to be executed this week.”
The Case of the Fake Sherlock
“Richard Walter was hailed as a genius criminal profiler. How did he get away with his fraud for so long?”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Reads from Zefyr Lisowski, David Gessner, Susie Cagle, Brendan I. Koerner, and Athena Aktipis and Coltan Scrivner.
When Innocence Isn’t Enough
Christopher Dunn has been in prison for over 30 years for a murder in St. Louis that he and others say he didn’t commit. Even though new evidence has emerged in favor of Dunn, the state of Missouri says he must stay in prison — because he wasn’t sentenced to death. He continued, “This Court does […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: Eschatolgy, Texas style; dancing like nobody’s watching; the men, they myths, the legends; monumental responses; and notes fit for a King.
A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld
“After Zac Brettler mysteriously plummeted into the Thames, his grieving parents discovered that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son. Would the police help them solve the puzzle of his death?”


