Well, folks, this is it. The last Top 5 newsletter of the year! Whether or not you’re observing any holidays, we hope you enjoy a restorative end to 2024. At the very least, you’ll have the full run of our Best of 2024 package at your disposal—between the stories we discussed in our year-end essays […]
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Inside the Making of the Britney Spears Musical
“After a year of seismic developments in the pop star’s real-life soap opera, a Broadway show set to her music—with a rise-up tale about a posse of princesses who become feminists—is set to debut.”
Shelved: Dr. Dre’s Detox
Killer beats, huge hype, and failure to follow through.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring standout reads from Ian Urbina, Hanif Abdurraqib, Sallie Tisdale, Brad Rassler, and Adam Reiner.
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’ […]
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 […]
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.
Earl King Deserves His Due
Earl King’s “discs were among the rare ones where the words were as important as the music, where blues guitar was balanced with second-line piano, and where the B-sides were as strong as the A-sides.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring standout stories by Michael Hall, Sarah Aziza, Ferris Jabr, Adrian Nathan West, and Kyle Chayka.
The Unappreciated Blog, Ghost Stories, and our Top 5
“To watch any ghost story set in a city like New York requires this kind of sensitivity, an awareness that every building is haunted, and that these hauntings happen in layers: as much as each generation tries to wipe out the traces of those who’ve come before, those memories are always there.” As we approach […]


