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A tribute to our feathered friends and four more excellent, hand-picked reads.

“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 extended family and drift back into our own homes, our own jobs, and perhaps our own small pockets of solitude.

In this edition: Concrete memories, grief science, captive cats, relentless pain, and myth meets reality.

“With this 11-a-side tournament, these young men would be the first to carry their nation onto an international stage. It seemed fitting that it would happen here in Springdale, home to the largest population of Marshallese anywhere outside the islands.” This week at Longreads, I’ve been thinking about our sense of place. It’s something I […]

“What is it, precisely, that you work for? What real goodness do you seek at the end of your own long line? “

“I-95 is an artery of ambition, movement, and flight. A place where millions of people hurry toward love and loss, carrying their hope, their grief, their ordinary Tuesdays, all at 70 miles per hour.” A favorite program of mine is Race Across the World. The concept is simple: Teams must cross entire countries without flying, armed only […]

We learn a lot as we move along; if we’re lucky, we might shed some old wisdom for better understanding.