Tales of odd phenomena stoke our imagination even as they tease us.
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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.
Wild Talk: A Reading List On Artificial Intelligence and Interspecies Communication
AI is opening up the possibility of communicating with other animals. But will we listen? And can we ever truly understand?
Kingdom of Funga: A Mycelial Reading List on a Strange and Surreal World Around Us
Seven stories celebrating the mystery and power of fungi.
Paging Dr. House: A Medical Mysteries Reading List
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a doctor. Never mind my terrible grades in all things science. Never mind that I decided this in my second year of college, after deciding that the music school that I’d wanted for years wasn’t for me. It was 2006. It was the age of Dr. Gregory […]
Deconstructing Disney: Queer Coding and Masculinity in Pocahontas
Pocahontas may seem like a strange vehicle for discussing our gay villains. But Disney gets inventive when they need to circumvent white people’s historical responsibility for genocidal atrocities — and queerness is a useful scapegoat.
Teaching Writing and Breaking Rules
Rules can ruin the kind of exciting language that makes literature rewarding, but some rules also enhance writing. It’s challenging to find the middle ground.
Monsters, Mothers, Mulieres: A Reading List on The Women of Classical Antiquity
Five stories of ambitious empresses, fearsome gladiators, and ordinary working-class residents — glimmering snapshots of the female experience in the classical world.
Madness, Melancholy, or Murder: An Ancient English Farm’s 50-Year-Old MysteryÂ
Andrew Chamings returns to his childhood farmland to investigate the mystifying deaths of the Luxton siblings. What really happened down that dark country lane?
Japan: A Longform Reading List of Longform Writing
Armchair travel is more important than ever, now that pandemic has forced us to stay indoors. Reading can take you across the ocean.

