Nine essays and interviews from literature’s favorite laureate of compassion.
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Costco in Cancún
“This is the Costco psychology: quality over brand; value over status. To be ripped off is to be taken for a sucker. It is to have your resources wasted, your hard-earned cash sucked into a delusion of taste, timeliness, or class.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Megan O’Grady, Alexander Sammon, Alaina Demopoulos, Blair Braverman, and Jack Crosbie.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this week’s Top 5 we have lessons from apartheid, clever Claude, feeling bodies anew, the power of wax, and free mining.
A Year in Reading: Inward Journeys
Navigating a world in flux demands some understanding of who you really are, and some of my favorite pieces from this year speak to that need.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Deaths in donation bins, the Hardy boys, MAGA slop, billionaire playgrounds, and nostalgia for the complicated.
A Notorious Pitchfork Reviewer Was My Biggest Musical Influence
“Pitchfork reviews have always been just as much about where and how music fits in the culture as they have been about the music itself.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Julia Webster Ayuso, Abe Beame, Tracy Thompson, Will Boast, and Gary Grimes.
Soundscapes of the Silenced
“In late Renaissance Florence one in five women lived behind institutional walls whose rule was sensory mortification. Historians are struggling to recover their inexpressible secrets.”

