“I-95 is an artery of ambition, movement, and flight. A place where millions of people hurry toward love and loss, carrying their hope, their grief, their ordinary Tuesdays, all at 70 miles per hour.” A favorite program of mine is Race Across the World. The concept is simple: Teams must cross entire countries without flying, armed only […]
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Talking Craft With the Writer and Editor Behind The Atavist’s New Issue
In this excerpt from The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, host Brendan O’Meara talks to Bill Donahue and Atavist editor Jonah Ogles about their work on “The Voyagers.”
Waterworld
Still or sparkling or artesian or glacier? Martin Riese, America’s first water sommelier, believes that the more we think about what we drink, the more we’ll care about the planet.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending noteworthy reads from Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh, Rachel Aviv, Abby Tickell, Nick Zarzycki, and Andrea Sachs.
Walking on Faith and the Week’s Top 5
“Most people here were trying to find a way to live with events that could have broken their lives: absence, illness, loss, death. How could I fault them for something I also wanted, which was to wring meaning from things that have none?” “Why was I stumbling alongside this mass of the devout?” This is […]
A Trip to Twin Peaks and the Week’s Top 5
“I’d taken for granted how strange his work is—in the defiantly non-naturalistic performances he elicits from his actors and the surreal sheen of his stories and characters—until I started trying to explain the plot of Twin Peaks to Riley on our drive to Washington.” This week, we pay homage to director David Lynch, with Katherine […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Today we’re featuring stories about YouTube pranksters, marathon cheats, cephalopods, sleep and a massive collection of restaurant menus. 1. Vigilantes for Views: The YouTube Pranksters Harassing Suspected Scam Callers in India Andrew Deck and Raksha Kumar | Rest of World | January 10, 2023 | 5,737 words Justice can mean equality, and it can also mean retribution. In the case of Artsiom […]
Best of 2024: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story that appeared in the number five slot in our Weekly Top 5, all in one place.
Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we recommend stories from Sophia Panych, Brian Payton, Jeannette Cooperman, Joshua Hunt, and Sophie Elmhirst.
Stand By Your Dictator
“The UN gave up trying to count the war’s death toll in 2016, when it had already reached nearly half a million. More than 10m Syrians are refugees.”


