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.
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Posted inFeature
Best of 2025: Our Most Popular Originals of the Year
Our 10 most-read Longreads essays of 2025.
Posted inUncategorized
The Man in the New Boots
“Maybe it’s that it’s goddamned insane to ride a bull, and America is full of crazy people who for no earthly reason see that sort of thing and want to try it themselves.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
St. John the Wondermaker
“Since April, on the past five fourth Wednesdays of the month I have driven to St. John the Wondermaker Orthodox Church, in Atlanta’s Grant Park neighborhood, to wash and trim and file the feet of a handful of the city’s 2,200 unhoused men.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Brass Bands
“I quite like the brass band version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, but I’m not sure it’s what Freddie Mercury had in mind.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
When Fact-Checking Meant Something
“Some of us threw up in the mornings before sitting down at our desks. Some of us smoked too much. All of us worried. But our state of doubt wasn’t only fearful; it was also electrifying.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons
“The truth is that however I choose to express myself will not live up to the weight of these facts: Vincent died, and then James died.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Notes From a Burmese Prison
“I came to Myanmar because, if our worst fears were coming to pass, I thought its journalists might have something to teach me.”
Posted inFeature
By All Measures
Our problems are too vast, our distance from them too great. How do we navigate our derangement of scale?
