“I came to a shack with a small, white-haired man inside. I assumed he had been guarding Devil’s Bridge for centuries. I answered his riddles three and he gestured for me to sign in. At the end of his hand was a damp pile of papers and a pen on a gray string. Like most […]
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we are featuring stories from Liam Taylor, Piers Gelly, Christopher Cox, Anna Russell, and Lisa Russ Spaar.
Two Assholes Lost in the Woods: An Oral History of ‘Pine Barrens’
“Twenty years after it aired, David Chase and Co. look back on the one of the wildest, boldest, funniest episodes of ‘The Sopranos’ ever made.”
A People’s History of Black Twitter, Part I
“We make spaces out of spaces where we were not intended to be. That’s what we do.” This is the first installment in a three-part oral history series on Black Twitter.
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 […]
Best of 2023: All of Our Number Five Story Picks
Each story we chose as our number five piece of the week in 2023, all in one place.
‘No Aliens, No Spaceships, No Invasion of Earth’
For the film’s 25th anniversary, Vulture compiled an oral history of Contact, the sci-fi movie that defied Hollywood norms and made it big anyway. Here are Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey: Foster: Nobody was computer literate at the time. I remember the first day with the technical adviser, [“We had Gerry Griffin on the movie,” Zemeckis […]
Bad Reputation: An Oral History of the Freaks and Geeks Soundtrack
“Judd Apatow, Paul Feig, Michael Andrews, and the cast and crew turn things up to 11.”
Svetlana Alexievich Reminds Me of How to Be Human
Sometimes I need to forget I’m an introvert.
Hoops, Double Helices, and Our Top 5
“I’m not just crying, I’m truly wailing. I’m one of Homer’s grieving women, I’m Alice in Wonderland crying an actual ocean between hiccups, I’m Diane Keaton weeping then whooping in her Something’s Gotta Give breakup montage. My team, the Lakers, has lost.” I confess: I did not know much about basketball until I worked with Rachel Dlugatch […]


