Here's what we've got for you in our Weekly Top 5:
* Long COVID camaraderie (Men's Health)
* Breeding terrorists on Telegram @ProPublica / Frontline
* 737 Max coverup (Wired)
* Petrusich profiles Dacus (The New Yorker)
* The Irish pub as export (Smithsonian Magazine)
Learn why our editors have recommended these pieces and find out which story our audience loved most.
Here's what we've got for you in our Weekly Top 5:
* Propagate language, preserve culture (Noēma)
* Hip-hop hooch hustles (Taste)
* Grieving a landscape lost (Salvation South)
* A gutsy take on indigestion (VQR)
* All the feels for the forums (The Fence)
Learn why our editors have recommended these pieces and find out which story our audience loved most.
"This wasn’t a huge cause for concern on its own. Plenty of teenagers smoke weed, after all, and turn out just fine. Anne and I just hoped it wouldn’t lead to anything else." —Scott Oake for The Walrus
"The wind gusts reached 100 miles per hour and the smoke was thick and rancid. Sarvis watched electric cars explode and garbage bins tip over, fill with flames, and blow down the streets like missiles." @jbienkahn for @RollingStone
Here's what we've got for you in our Weekly Top 5:
* Dying to seek asylum in Canada (The Local)
* The rise of UFC @RollingStone
* Hoarding at the British Museum (The Guardian)
* A mystery at Lake Tahoe (Bay Nature)
* Dog dialogue (NYT Mag)
Learn why our editors have recommended these pieces and find out which story our audience loved most.
"In the shallows of south Lake Tahoe, diver Brandon Berry is slurping up clouds of algae with an underwater vacuum cleaner. . . The filamentous, cotton-candy-like algae is a persistent affliction here, where it intermittently grows, dies, washes up on the shoreline, and rots in unsightly, smelly piles." —Sonya Bennett-Brandt for Bay Nature magazine
https://longreads.com/2025/01/17/what-lies-beneath-2/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
"I had long understood crosswords as an art form, but I began to appreciate them as serious records of culture and current affairs." —Abigail Popple for Maisonneuve
https://longreads.com/2025/01/15/puzzle-politics/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
"Her Little Free Art Library on Queen Anne was designed like a museum, with lighting and white walls, a tiny bench for viewing (with minifigures observing the display), and a tiny easel and shelf displaying drawings and paintings with dimensions of just a few inches." —Rebekah Denn for @civileats
"Nathan tried to encourage her to leave. 'You need to get yourself out of this situation,” he said. “You need to be careful. If they’ve done it once, what’s going to stop them from doing something like that again?'”
—Ian Frisch for Curbed
https://www.curbed.com/article/houston-apartment-affordable-place-turned-hellish.html
"Sniffing, searching, naming: These actions enable us to more thoughtfully engage with our environment. The more I sniffed at bark, the more confused I became. What did pine even smell like, anyway? It was only when I stepped back that the forest came into view. Iconic and piney, certainly, but also so much more." —Katy Kelleher for Nautilus Magazine
“'During the pregnancy, you’ll be a spectator,' Margot warned us very early on, drawing the delicate boundary between her pregnancy and our child. This is our first surrogacy journey, but we are Margot’s third parents." —Kristina Kasparian for Electric Literature
"Similarly, Fabian Stewart, from Gingolx, is fire chief and bylaw officer and is always called upon for rescues, whether they be on land or water. 'If [there’s an emergency] and you have a running boat, you’d better go out and look,' echoes [William] Smythe, Stewart’s lifelong friend."
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-first-first-responders/
"For most of his adult life, he had worried about climate change. But as time wore on, he had begun to think that collapse was inevitable." —Michaela Cavanagh for Hazlitt
If you're looking for a set of stories to challenge your heart and mind, we've got the perfect collection. This reading list compiles every number one story recommended in our Weekly Top 5 Newsletter in 2024.
"But before 1978, insulin was made by harvesting and grinding up the pancreases of dead pigs from slaughterhouses. Some 24,000 pigs were needed to make just one pound of insulin, which could treat only 750 diabetics annually." —Niko McCarty, Xander Balwit for Works in Progress
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/animals-as-chemical-factories/
Here's what we've got for you in our Weekly Top 5:
* An opioid town’s turnaround @nymag
* A love letter to cardboard (Places Journal)
* The chemicals animals provide (Works in Progress)
* Computerized companions @verge
* The transfiguration of Jude Law (British GQ)
Learn why our editors have recommended these pieces and find out which story our audience loved most.
“It took a few minutes for the cross to catch fire, but when it did, it burned higher and brighter than any cross in Mississippi history.” —Thomas G. Easterling III for Salvation South
https://www.salvationsouth.com/crossed-signals-fiction-thomas-easterling/
“Is the Blue Zones Project a genuinely innovative program, or a trendy—and expensive—marketing ploy inspired by sound principles but uncertain data?” —Shayla Love for @newrepublic
https://newrepublic.com/article/188317/blue-zones-longevity-hot-spots-myth
“Nadine received 1,430 milligrams of a drug whose standard dosage for an adult is 260 milligrams. She weighed 100 pounds.” @ProPublica@newsie.social, @propublica@threads.net
https://www.propublica.org/article/thomas-weiner-montana-st-peters-hospital-oncology
“In short, Barre is where many struggling with addiction *have* to be, even though they know it’s the last place they *should* be.” —Joe Sexton for Seven Days
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/news/in-barre-a-church-for-the-addicted-seeks-to-save-souls-42397892
