Nigeria isn’t just the most populous nation in Africa; over the past few decades, as Samanth Subramanian details in this sprawling travelog, it’s become home to the largest community of Jews in the sub-Saharan part of the continent. But while this burgeoning community may not yet have Israel’s official recognition, its faith isn’t just syncretic […]
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Escaping China with a Spoon and a Rusty Nail
“I never imagined that I would stay there for three years and eight months, from the ages of 16 to 19.”
Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life
“The singer-songwriter believes that we are deeply flawed, impermanent creatures who can sometimes do extraordinary things.”
Eyes on the Prize: A Treasure Hunting Reading List
Every quest holds at its heart a puzzle to solve—and that puzzle can become an obsession.
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 […]
Shifting Identity, Shamans, and the Week’s Top 5
“So long as there are nations, there will be people trying to get out of them, tracking ceaselessly from one to the other while maybe wishing they could belong to the world instead.” In making a cross-country move recently, I realized that I can be a different person in a new place. There’s a certain […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we are sharing stories from Thomas Hale, Sam Edwards, Kim Cross, Jaq Evans, and Matti Friedman
Kingdom of Funga: A Mycelial Reading List on a Strange and Surreal World Around Us
Seven stories celebrating the mystery and power of fungi.
My Grandmother’s Dark Secret
The music emanating from a storefront church in Brooklyn was a death knell: Once my grandmother heard it, her childhood was over.


