“When my father-in-law was growing up in Baltimore and misbehaved in Hebrew school with his friends, their teachers would calmly unbutton their cuffs and roll up their sleeves, revealing their tattoos from Auschwitz. I’ve seen worse, the tattoos said. Or perhaps, This could happen to you.” What does your tattoo mean? It’s a question often asked of […]
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The Wonder of Walking and the Week’s Top 5
“I’ve always been intrigued by how environments influence the way we move, feel, and experience—and how our movements, in turn, change those environments.” Once a day, we suit up the dog and take a family walk to a park overlooking the Salish Sea. There’s something about watching dogs at play that fills us up. The […]
The Worst Air Disaster You’ve Never Heard Of
In the early days of flight, airships were hailed as the future of war. Then disaster struck the USS Akron.
Enduring Battles, a Musical Childhood, and Our Top 5
“I felt like a rat trapped in a maze with no finish, running into walls and getting electrocuted at every turn. I wanted out of the hellscape I’d created, but I had formed a whole identity around the latticework of visible bones and tendons; my days were structured around the denial of food. To give […]
This Week: Rituals, Emoji, and a Cold Case
“Ritual is an urge and an act; it’s an aesthetic gesture. As an adult I established the habit of turning my attention to those subtle seasonal details and recording them. I was loving and honoring the land, but this practice still left something undone. A certain clarity, maybe formality. Something like a frame around a […]
The Soundtrack of Our Lives: A Reading List on Pop Concerts
It’s been a huge year for live music, so let’s take a tour.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring notable stories by Antonia Cundy, Adrian Walker, Evan Allen, Elizabeth Koh, Andrew Ryan, Kristin Nelson, Brendan McCarthy, Frederick Kaufman, Lygia Navarro, and Judith Hannah Weiss.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend stories by Naomi Gordon-Loebl, Jean Guerrero, Ben Goldfarb, Dan Kois, and Reeves Wiedeman.


