It sounds like a whodunit, but it’s anything but: One man placing multiple 911 calls every day, reporting crimes in progress at a building that doesn’t exist. The question isn’t who, but why — and David Wilson masterfully unpacks the turmoil living inside the man responsible, and the difficulty of helping him find a lasting stability. In […]
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend stories by Bushra Seddique, Simon van Zuylen-Wood, Laura Mauldin, Kathryn Miles, and Lucas Mann.
The Tragedy of Jayquan McKenley
From the current New York issue’s package on drill music comes this urgent, saddening profile of Jayquan McKenley, a sweethearted teenager and burgeoning artist whose murder sparked a new wave of handwringing around the rap subgenre. Even to drill’s defenders, it seemed clear that social media had sped up a cycle of retaliatory shootings; the Bronx’s […]
Odd, Genius, or Something In Between: A Reading List on Writers
“Give me the weird tics, the turns of phrase, the strange beginnings. Give me the writer in their natural habitat.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend stories by Caitlin Dickerson, Samira Shackle, Mitchell S. Jackson, Roberto José Andrade Franco, and Ian Dille.
Patrick Radden Keefe Gets to the Bottom of It
If you’re a sucker for hearing how great journalists report and structure their work — and who isn’t? — this Q&A with New Yorker write-around specialist Patrick Radden Keefe makes for a perfect Monday read. It’s always the same: It starts with a series of big beats. If it’s an article, it starts with eight […]
Gary Smith, Master of the Sports Longform, Left at the Very Top. Why?
The latest in SI‘s “Where Are They Now?” series covers longtime staffer Smith, arguably one of the finest profilers the journalism world has ever known. His portraits of Mike Tyson, Andre Agassi, and other icons cut through the insularity of sports fandom to become the stuff of magazine legend. Now, Joseph Bien-Kahn heads to South […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend notable features and essays by Katie Barnes, Rachel Handler, Alex Hawkins, Lila Shapiro, and Raksha Vasudevan.
Nathan Fielder Is Out of His Mind (and Inside Yours)
On the axis of cringe comedy, Nathan Fielder’s work on TV series Nathan For You ranks somewhere between Sasha Baron Cohen and Covering Your Eyes and Ears to Escape the Vicarious Embarrassment. But Lila Shapiro’s profile, coming just ahead of Fielder’s return to television, attempts to peel back the layers of artifice between man and world. […]
In Search of Chad Hugo
For music fans of a certain age (that certain age hopefully being 14 to 94), Chad Hugo is a legendary producer: half of The Neptunes, along with Pharrell Williams. Yet he always played the back — and has receded even more so in recent years. Hugo’s reticence may never fully give way in this profile […]
