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.
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A Water Obsession and Our Weekly Top 5
“The majority of home water use takes place in the bathroom, so that’s where I started. I scaled back my showers to once a week and only flushed the toilet when the need was overwhelming. I wandered my dark little apartment doing calculations on a loop. How many gallons of water does the Livingston faucet […]
The Search for Answers, and the Week’s Top 5
“Words only ever do so much. But, time and again, Saunders’s words—in his own stories, and in conversation—reveal their utility. They insist on our dignity, however and wherever they find us. And they help us extend the same dignity to others.” This week my wife and I watched the documentary Cover-Up, about journalist Seymour Hersh […]
A Profile of J. Robert Oppenheimer
“‘Operation Joe’ finds our top expert on atomic energy confidently carrying forward his research in the field of pure basic science, where the atomic bomb is only a ‘gadget.'”
On 4th and Broadway: Remembering Tower Records
“To this day, I’ve never stopped thinking about that music sanctuary for the twenty years it existed at that location.”
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.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
We’re showcasing work by Kate Wagner, Fintan O’Toole, Rowan Jacobsen, Tamara Kneese, and Susan Dominus.
The Fugitive Heiress Next Door
“How a reclusive woman’s past in suburban D.C. sparked a true-crime sensation in Brazil—and a national reckoning over the status of household servants.”
A Trip to the Library and Our Weekly Top 5
“I may never have wanted to be a librarian, but I love this job. This specific job. Not because of any kind of noble commitment to knowledge or love of books. I love it because every day requires me to meet humanity face to face.” What does it mean to be a librarian today? At […]


