In this edition: metal medicine, hyped humanoids, carnival crossroads, divine defiance, and optimization obsession.
Places Journal
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Theology of Smuggling
“In the early 1980s, in Tucson, activists and religious leaders joined forces to protect refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border. Their collaboration galvanized the Sanctuary Movement.”
Posted inReading List
Map Room: A Radical Reading List on Cartographic Power, Perspective, and Possibility
Seven stories celebrating our fascination with maps.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Altadena: Four Stories
For three weeks in January, the Eaton Fire raced through the small community of Altadena, California, destroying more than 9,000 buildings and killing seventeen people. Afterward, we invited four writers, all longtime local residents, to share memories, and photographs, of what burned, and what didn’t.
Posted inFeature
Best of 2024: The Stories You Missed
It’s been a busy year: Here are some noteworthy pieces that may have passed you by.
Posted inCuration
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories by Jeannette Cooperman, Jackson Arn, Andrew Hui, Myriam Gurba, and Simon Hattenstone.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Santa Maria
“A youthful obsession with Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’ turns to frustration over how its subject, Florence Owens Thompson, an Indigenous woman, has been misperceived.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Paradise Redux
“In Butte County, California, five years after the Camp Fire.”