In this edition: gambling’s grip, a story of plumes and poachers, bemoaning American tourists in Rome, a magical history tour, and a fake poultry flinger.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we are featuring stories from Mark Follman, Scott Stossel, Wei Tchou, Sara Franklin, and Alexander Sammon.
‘We are Witnessing a Crime Against Humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid Catastrophe
“The system has not collapsed. The ‘system’ barely existed. The government – this one, as well as the Congress government that preceded it – deliberately dismantled what little medical infrastructure there was.”
The Perils of Television and Five Brilliant Reads
“This is what interests me about SNL. For almost its entire existence, its workers have been very clear about its costs. From interns to stars, they’ve described the show as an intensely discriminatory workplace run by a cold, manipulative boss. As they’ve told us this, SNL has grown into one of the most important institutions in American culture. ” […]
When Hannibal Lecter Took Over
With “The Silence of the Lambs” hitting theaters, Orion wanted a hit. They didn’t anticipate an antihero.
Spelunking, ET-Hunting, and the Week’s Top 5
“Forgetting is a part of living. This issue of mine is more of an inconvenience and less of a cause for alarm. But an inconvenience it is, and I worry about the future, when my mom is gone, maybe my dad too, and there’s no one to fill in the blanks for me, no more […]
The Bullet and the Ballplayer
In 2019, beloved baseball player David Ortiz was shot at a bar in the Dominican Republic. The shooting swiftly unraveled the two very different lives the Boston Red Sox star had been living, in Boston and in his home country. Mike Damiano masterfully tells Ortiz’s story for Boston magazine. That frenzied quest for answers has […]
A New Series, An Unknown History, and the Week’s top 5
“Minstrelsy shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing—the thing you can see most vividly—while something else works behind the scenes. That something is something only those who are tapped into a specific kind of pain, a specific kind of quest for freedom that has failed before but is not worth abandoning, might understand.” […]
The (Un-)Happiest Place on Earth and the Week’s Top 5
“I left Trip House at 8:12 on Saturday morning, having not been murdered, and drove to the Magic Kingdom. The woman at the ticket window asked if I’d come to Disney World to celebrate anything special, and I laughed. If I answered that question truthfully — using unmagical words like ‘genital,’ ‘student loan,’ and ‘gentrification’ […]
Longreads Best of 2020: Crime Reporting
Our top picks in Crime Reporting for 2020.


