Every quest holds at its heart a puzzle to solve—and that puzzle can become an obsession.
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Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we’re recommending stories by Moira Donegan, Danyel Smith, Dan Kois, Michael Aylwin, and Becky Ferreira.
Posted inStory
Ron’s Place
A man’s death revealed his secret masterpiece—his rented home, illegally transformed into a classical villa. What happened next questions how we define art.
Posted inNonfiction
Death of Writing, Writing of Death: A Reading List on Artificial Intelligence and Language
Five longreads on artificial intelligence and a future filled with machine-written prose.
Posted inNonfiction
The Dark and Stormy Tale of a ShantyTok Band
When a scraggly band of folk musicians arrived to tour the UK, residents of a small Welsh town were enamored—until they learned that the band’s leader ruled with an iron fist.
Posted inReading List
Imperial Eras: A Taylor Swift Studies Reading List
How Taylor Swift reflects every possible version of ourselves.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Knives Outback
“Allen, during his interviews, had found an undercurrent of tension among Larrimah’s remaining 12 residents, one that stemmed from years of escalating feuds both small and large, unusual even for a tiny town where everyone knows each other’s business.”
Posted inUncategorized
How Silence Protects and Harms Us (plus the Week’s Top 5)
“We still fight with the same Vietnamese stubbornness that is in our blood. I struggle with knowing far more English than Vietnamese. As you age, I fret about the ultimate silence of losing you. Although this dynamic will never go away, there have been new rhetorical tools to soften our challenges. Phrases like ‘I’m sorry’ […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories from Emily Bazelon, Eva Holland, Kevin Pang, Jessica Traynor, and David Pierce.
Posted inNewsletter
A near-death experience and our Top 5 stories of the week
“My boating experience was minimal and that section of river was not for beginners, but I had scraped by enough times that my risk assessment was dangerously off-kilter. It was a really, really bad combination.” Congratulations—we made it to the weekend! We’ve got some unforgettable stories for you this week. First, Maggie Slepian recounts her […]
