In this edition: Concrete memories, grief science, captive cats, relentless pain, and myth meets reality.
Places Journal
Posted inEditor's Pick
Silicon Valley Circuits
“Route 85 in California now inspires dread. Some of us remember when it was a vision of the future.”
Posted inReading List
Friction: A Reading List on Why Inconvenience Can Be Meaningful
Five stories that explore the risks and rewards of life’s little hurdles.
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This edition highlights reading about messages in bottles, public benches, infinity, a series of books about everything, and pay-to-play orchestras.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Disappearance of the Public Bench
“Benches are microcosms of an expansive debate about who belongs in urban public spaces. When they are removed or made uninviting, we lose more than just a place to rest.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Warehouse, in Plain Sight
“That concrete box off the freeway wasn’t designed for storage so much as capture—of markets, workers, and, now, people detained by immigration agents. It’s a disappearing machine. We need to see it clearly.”
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: metal medicine, hyped humanoids, carnival crossroads, divine defiance, and optimization obsession.
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.