'Nature, as they say, would run its course.'

Hi 👋 

We’re back again with another reading list of some of the best longform journalism across the internet ✨

Nothing much to say in this week’s intro, but I just want to remind everyone that if you have any features/changes you’d like to see, please don’t hesitate to hit me up. I’m thinking of maybe expanding TLR beyond being a simple newsletter and maybe be its own standalone thing. So there’s anything you want to see there, now’s the time to let those be known.

Some standouts from last week’s email:

• The New York Times Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files 

• GQ How to Make a Police Shooting Disappear: The Tamir Rice Story

• The Drift Vibe, Mood, Energy

As with last week, please let me know what you think of the list this week by voting in the poll below.

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

I’ve somewhat fallen into a Sean Flynn rabbit hole, and I’ve stumbled into this piece that, for people of the media like me, is a profound interrogation of the work that we do. Sean here profiles a documentarian who built a fruitful career out of the story of a tribe in Papua New Guinea, which in subsequent years opened itself up more and more to outside influence. And so aside from looking at the press as an active interloper in these indigenous histories, this piece also dabbles into tribal politics and culture.

I will say that I wish Sean pushed the documentarian some more. As a mediaman himself, Sean would have known that it’s difficult and naive to claim that our work as reporters and writers—who drop into a community, extract their stories, and then fly out—doesn’t affect the lives of our subjects. Sean knows that, and I think he should have shown more of that on the page.

Also on indigenous peoples: This article from The Texas Observer traces the fraught history of the Lipan Apache tribe, from its insular, pastoral beginnings and through the violent genocide wrought upon native peoples by the predominantly white US government.

The narrative backbone connecting all of this is a personal story from the writer, Darcie Little Badger, whose ancestral grandma was found in the property of someone but, by some cruel twist of the law, did not legally and technically belong to her descendants. Her remains, instead, ended up in some school. This story follows the campaign—and the introspection, the personal reckoning with a larger history—to bring those remains home.

A big lesson I got from this story is that culture can be an extremely powerful force in bringing people together, but it’s sometimes not enough to keep them that way, especially in the face of overwhelmingly opposite politics—and, of course, religious compulsions.

Writer Joshua Hammer really dissects that tension here by going into one of the planet’s most war-torn regions and looking at how close they were to achieving lasting peace, brokered by a pair of leaders who sought to use music to heal historical wounds. But, as we know today, this effort collapsed and threw the region into even more chaos and violence. There is a hopeful tenor throughout the piece, but one that I’m not sure even Joshua himself buys.

Another top-notch work from The Atavist.

Speaking of culture: This essay from Aeon really approaches the topic head-on. Writer Polina Aronson directly interrogates the differences in how U.S. Americans and Russians approach the idea of love—differences, she argues, that are deeply rooted in cultural sensibilities.

The so-called West, Polina argues, is highly individualized and consumerist. I’d personally call it selfish and transactional: If a partner can’t fulfill our needs, our best recourse is to leave. Russians are, in important ways, the exact and extreme opposite. Suffering is romanticized and valorized, often to a destructive degree.

The conclusion here is obvious—so much so that it sort of feels like a cop-out, which I admit is an unfair reading given how it makes perfect sense. There must be a middle-ground between these two concepts of love, Polina argues, one that understands the crucial value of sacrifice without necessarily destroying oneself.

This is an essay that could only have come from the mid-2010s, when the media landscape was much more dynamic than it is today, with publications that were brave and creative enough to commission pieces beyond those that they were sure would get clicks. I miss all of it.

Here, writer Rebecca Giggs retells her experience of watching a beached whale. There’s her emotional journey from hope to frustration; from pity to horror. Then there’s also the bigger stuff: The decay of a whale’s body as it falls down the water column and the ecosystem of sea creatures that live off of its carcass. The environmental crisis and the profusion of chemical pollution in the ocean. Our role as stewards (or mere inhabitants) of this planet.

I find it strange and amusing that the media is so fascinated with OnlyFans as a cultural and internet phenomenon, like that old auntie of yours who keeps on asking you what it is that you do for work but never quite understands.

Here writer P.E. Moskowitz profiles one of the top male creators on the platform, but does so in a way that tries really hard—at least, hard enough to be noticeable—to be light and whimsy and humorous. I don’t have anything against that, nor do I think that it’s distasteful. Plus I think they pulled it off really well. But I don’t know. I can’t quite shake the feeling that the media is trying to be this boomer type that keeps on trying to nail down cultural trends that have clearly left them behind.

Speaking of cultural trends: This is one that I have a strong negative reaction to—and I’m fully aware that I might be tipping my hand here and showing my age a little too much.

My social media feeds have, in recent months, been flooded not just by ads for testosterone supplements (including injections, like the ones that this story addresses), but also influencers talking about testosterone and hawking these products to improve your testosterone. I understand how it can be easy for men to fall for this—advertising is one hell of an industry, after all.

But I, for one, bristle strongly at this recent wave of testosterone scare, and perhaps even the broader trend of people “maxxing” things about them. It all feels very misguided.

Thanks for reading! Please, please reach out if you have feedback, suggestions, or questions. Alternatively, you can fill out this super quick survey form. I promise it won’t even take five minutes of your time, and it’ll be a HUGE help!

ALSO: I know some of the stories I recommend might be behind paywalls, and maybe I can help you with access to those. Send me a message and let’s see what we can do 😊

Until next Monday! 👋