“I peeled the list off the windshield and held it like an artifact: evidence of a life I didn’t know but suddenly cared about. It read like a poem. A confession. What was the story behind this list, I wondered—and what would come for this stranger after the checkout aisle?” I love making lists. They […]
Search results
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend stories by Michael Wilson, Joseph Bien-Kahn, Jason Anthony, AC Shelton, and Tom Breihan.
An Alleged $500 Million Ponzi Scheme Preyed on Mormons. It Ended with FBI Gunfire.
“In Las Vegas, a lawyer with huge gambling debts is accused of a financial fraud that left hundreds of victims in its wake.”
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
This week, our editors recommend longreads by Benjamin Wofford, Josh Dzieza, Evan Osnos, Alice Wong & Ed Yong, and Dan Kois.
Cabin Fever: A Reading List for the Perpetually Isolated
How the pandemic made us confront what it means to be alone.
Wrapping Up 2024 and the Week’s Top 5
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 […]
Remembering, Forgetting, and The Week’s Top 5
Two brand new essays and The Weekly Top 5.
I Shredded a 70-Mile Dirt Ride on a Folding Commuter Bike
If you’re ripping off 70 miles of off-road riding in a day, you’d probably go for a mountain bike or gravel bike. Maybe a cyclocross bike. Or you could, as Elena Lacey details in this joyous travelogue for WIRED, opt for a $5,000 titanium folding Brompton. Just don’t expect to clear any obstacles. As I […]


