In partnership with

Hi 👋 

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

Been really sick last week. And it’s the type of sick that kept me in bed for a few days, and which made it difficult for my brain to focus. I know I always say no excuses, but I was really out of it this week. Which is why this list is a bit shorter than usual.

Which sucks, because this is our first-year anniversary edition!

(Well, actually, it’s tomorrow, but the point stands 🤓☝️)

Thank you so much for joining me on this adventure! Lots of lessons learned in the first year, but I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. Which only means that theres so much more for me to figure out about TLR (and about running a newsletter and a community.) I find that really scary, but also really exciting. I hope you all continue to stick around as TLR grows. I have a few things planned for this year (and the coming years) and I can’t wait to get those going for all of you.

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

PS - Thanks again to 1440 Media for supporting this week’s newsletter! Please, please click the ad below the fold. It’s really easy (and free!) way to help TLR.

Story in Spotlight

This is going to be weird to say but this story from 2017 is once again—and deeply unfortunately—timely.

This is a really heartbreaking story, one that I think very clearly demonstrates how quickly rhetoric can turn lethal. Look: I’m not from the U.S., nor do I live there. And I don’t want to speak on anything that I don’t reasonably understand. But I will say that there has to be a better way, right? There’s no need to inspire so much hate against certain groups of people—especially not if it’s clear that there is a very short, very effective pipeline that goes from hate to hurt.

On a more technical level, the writer was really smart to first dive into the personal histories of the characters here. That’s a technique that I think is overused in the longform genre, and is often unneeded in many stories, but was done to great effect here. I found myself really rooting for the victims, which made the shooting that much more painful for me.

There’s really not much I can say about this story that hasn’t already been said in the past week or so. It’s been a scary few days for some of our fellow lazy readers out there, and my heart goes out to you guys. Stay safe, please.

Long and painful. Maybe set aside an hour or more for this, to give yourself enough time to breathe.

The Longform List

 😸 Lost on Sullivan’s Island | Truly*Adventurous, Free

Cat lovers to the front!

This one is a fun piece of storytelling that touches on many different aspects of society, which are magnified by the fact that this story takes place in a resonably secluded and affluent island. I have to say: The subhead and the photo, which allude to a very dark story, kind of misrepresent this piece. I found it to be light and delightful, but also really insightful.

Not excessively long. Goes deep into some history, but it never really felt unwieldy. Overall an enjoyable experience for me. Probably 30 to 40 minutes.

🏚️ The House on West Clay Street | New York Magazine, $

This is one of those True Crime stories that I can’t believe isn’t actually a work of fiction. (I swear I’m willing these things into my reading feeds now, which I’m absolutely not complaining about.)

The reporting here is incredible, but what really makes this sing is the prose. The story, by itself, already stretches the boundaries of credibility, but the way the writer lays things out and builds tension and intrigue is really takes it to another level. Easily the most enjoyable read of the week for me.

Very long, but also deeply, incredibly gripping. Couldn’t take my eyes off it. Took me 30 minutes.

🍄 The Psychedelic Miracle | Rolling Stone, $

For my day job, I’ve been doing a lot of reporting on psychedelic drug development. So that’s maybe why there’ve been so many of these longform stories that have been showing up for me.

That’s fine, though, because it’s always helpful for a specialist writer to still be in touch with what the general pubs are saying. And this story is a really powerful one, too, written from the POV of someone who’s suffered from intense trauma for years, and was then forced by circumstance to turn to psychedelics for a shot at relief.

There’s a part of me that sort of bristles at the talking points about psychedelics that I think are less-informed (especially with how questionable the data have been), but that part is easily overpowered by just how raw and emotional this story gets at times. I think that, by itself, really effectively shows the gritty reality of psychedelic treatments.

Long and can be really tough to read at some points because of how raw it is. Those things don’t really affect me much so that didn’t slow me down. I took 40 minutes.

📖 There is No Safe Word | Vanity Fair, $

I’ve been trying to avoid sharing this on TLR, but with how big it’s gotten, there really was no way for me to just gloss over it.

Especially since I’ve fallen way back into the book world again (Finally! After years of having just atrocious attention span)—and especially with how terrible the allegations are. Gaiman has been an icon of fiction for so long and his work shaped so much of my transformative years, and reading how depraved and abusive he is explains so much of his work—and casts everything in such a disgusting light. Really makes you wonder about the industry at large. Did other giants of the genre know about this? And were they abetting it?

I know I’m not supposed to pass judgement before the case resolves or whatever, but what the fuck, Neil.

Long, and definitely, definitely triggering. Consider this as your trigger warning: please be careful when reading through this story, and feel free to skip it if it will help keep your peace. 1 hour, breathing breaks included.

🏛 The Eugenicist of UNESCO | Aeon, Free

This is an interesting one. The title is definitely a bit clickbaity, but it’s not as if the writer outright lies or even misrepresents anything.

If anything, the story provides a broad and well-rounded view of eugenics. Social engineering, if you really think about it, goes far beyond the ambit of Nazi Germany and ethnic cleansing and America’s sterilization programs for Black people and other horrible things like those. As with everything, there’s a lot of nuance behind the word, and it would do all of us well to examine our own sensibilities to see if there are shades of eugenicism there.

I have strongly mixed feelings about this story, but I’m afraid that I haven’t yet sorted through them. Not for lack of trying, definitely, but just that eugenics really is a very complex thing, made even more complicated in this story because of how influential UNESCO is.

Long and can really inspire a lot of thinking on the side, which in turn could slow down your reading. I’d set aside an hour ish. 

♀️ The Professor of Parody | The New Republic, Free

This one was recommended to me by a reader, which I really appreciated because these types of academic-adjacent longreads tend to fall outside of my usual scanning radar.

That said, this isn’t my usual reading fare. And I’ll admit that I found the prose here to be really thick and slow, and a bit difficult to get through. Still, I found the arguments to be compelling. I have been noticing a trend toward toothlessness when it comes to activism in recent years, and people (at least online) seem to be content with just saying the right things without feeling the need to back those up with anything concrete.

I do want to make it clear, though, that I am no expert in critical literary theory. So I am in no place to make any academic appraisal of Butler and her work, which I’m sure has helped countless people find their way in the world.

Long. Plus a difficult read, at least for me. I took an hour, bogged down by the heavy sentences and paragraphs.

Receive Honest News Today

Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.

Sign up today!

Happy Anniversary, TLR!

Something meta to celebrate our first year!

The very first spotlight story I shared on TLR—when it was just me screaming into the void of a mailing list with three of my friends—was this really smart Kyle Chayka thinkpiece about how the algorithm flattens everyone’s aesthetic into this boring, aseptic, minimalistic style. I recommend reading it if you haven’t yet!

But what better way to celebrate our first-year anniversary with another incisive piece from Kyle himself. But this time the sharp edge of his analysis is pointed inward. I’m secure enough to admit that TLR is part of this online recommendation culture that Kyle calls banal. And while that stung a bit at first, I don’t disagree with him.

The Internet seems to be entering this period of endless aggregation and curation, an infinity loop of recommendation. And there’s some truth in what Kyle points out as a problem: That this is a self-defeating cycle. If everyone just curates, then who will be left to actually create?

But I think he makes a stronger point when he calls out AI and and the advertising/marketing industry at large. People (at least those that I’ve spoken to in person, and those who I came to know because of TLR) are sick of being inundated with recommendations that they know were powered by an algorithm, or which they know were made only because someone got a brand deal. I know its become an annoying buzzword in the influencer era (or likely especially because of it), but it’s true that people still crave authenticity online.

I’m sure there’s a point at which this cycle of aggregating and recommending will start to feel disingenuous. I think we’re still a bit a ways off from that.

Not long at all. 10 minutes tops.

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! 👋