Featuring stories by Michael Lewis, Patricia Wen, Ted Chiang, Katie Thornton, and Sarah Smarsh.
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A Year in Reading: Restraint as Wisdom
We live in a culture built on ignoring limits—of land, of bodies, of attention—and these stories kept returning me to that truth.
Trusting Your Gut and This Week’s Top 5
“I study the pinch pot in my hands. It seems suddenly urgent not to see them seeing me. Heat crawls from my cheeks to my hairline. I hear the furious thrum of blood in my ears. With my fingers I smooth down the walls of my pot. To my utter relief, no more questions follow.” […]
Harrowing Outdoor Adventure and the Week’s Top 5
“Traveling the entire length was the equivalent of climbing and descending more than eighteen Mount Everests over a distance equivalent to nearly fifty marathons.” I’m powerless against outdoor adventure stories. I love tales of arduous trips through harsh landscapes, ones where Mother Nature can be fickle, casting weather spells that bring surprise, danger, and a […]
Where Truffles Thrive, the Week’s Top 5, and a Member Drive
“Before we became such a complex profusion of cells, we were driven by chemical impulse, which a truffle knows better than anyone. That’s why they fetch the prices they do. Why animals will harm themselves to unearth a fruit. Why truffle hunters are poisoning one another’s dogs. Why suspected truffle thieves in French orchards get […]
Walking on Faith and the Week’s Top 5
“Most people here were trying to find a way to live with events that could have broken their lives: absence, illness, loss, death. How could I fault them for something I also wanted, which was to wring meaning from things that have none?” “Why was I stumbling alongside this mass of the devout?” This is […]
Did Bad Fire Science Send Tim and Deb Nicholls to Prison?
“When he opens the bedroom window, there’s smoke billowing past his head. The next thing he recalls is waking up outside to a nightmare.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending great reads from Zack Stanton, Bryce Upholt, Charlie Warzel, Emily Stoddard, and Laurence Gonzalez.
Best of 2025: The Stories You Missed
In a year of exceptional reading, these overlooked stories refused to let us go.
‘Actually Really Sacred’: A George Saunders Reading List
Nine essays and interviews from literature’s favorite laureate of compassion.


