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Hi 👋 

Another Monday, another TLR reading list of some of the best longform stories ✨

Just want to say upfront that there are some difficult material in this week’s newsletter. Feel free to skip stories that you think could trigger you.

Nothing much else to say this week. But what do you guys think of word games? Wordle, for example, or crossword or connections. I’ve been thinking of running something like those for TLR and wanted to get a feel for what the community thinks.

(Nothing near yet, of course. I do this solo and don’t currently have the time or energy or resources to pull something like that off. But I can certainly build toward it).

In any case, if you missed last week’s email, here are a few choice picks:

• A deadly hike and the making of heroes.

• When the Mona Lisa went missing.

• Faith and fire.

As always, 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!

PS - Thanks again to 1440 Media for supporting this week’s newsletter. And thanks to you for always reading (and clicking through the ads)! It’s such a big help to me 🙏

Story in Spotlight

Halloween in June, anyone?

Long-time readers will know that I ran a special Halloween edition of TLR last October (read it here). At the time, I really, genuinely thought I did a good job of at least semi-exhaustively looking for the scariest, spookiest longform stories to recommend. Clearly I was wrong.

This piece, from 1989, is easily the creepiest story I’ve read. There’s gore, suspense and a healthy dose of the occult. TexasMonthly positions it as a True Crime piece, which I guess is technically true, but which I think undercuts the horror-y vibe of this story. The writer should have leaned more heavily into that, in my opinion.

All of this is not to say, of course, that the writer did a mediocre job; quite the opposite, really. It’s worth repeating that this piece was published in 1989, nearly three decades ago. But you really wouldn’t be able to tell. Gary Cartwright writes with polish and finesse, enough to easily outpace today’s prime journalists. Prose is tight and restrained, which I think is important for stories like these that are way too easy to overhype. But Gary also knows when he needs to go heavy on the descriptors, which he does masterfully.

The effect is a story that’s compelling as it is, but made even more so by its execution.

And I’ve intentionally side-stepped talking about the actual substance of the stor. I think that’s something you need to experience first-hand for its full effect to really hit you in the face.

Long, dark. Difficult to read. Can be triggering, so consider that. But otherwise an easy favorite of mine. 1 hour ish.

The Longform List

Poison Pill | Truly*Adventurous, Free

It’s very hard to stand out in the packed True Crime genre, but this one managed to do that very comfortably. There are two crimes here, both of which were massive and grisly enough to have shaken the respective communities in which they were committed. There is a man at the center of both crimes, and a stack of evidence that incriminate him. There are victims and their loved ones left behind, lives that were completely, thoroughly shattered. The only thing missing, tragically, is justice.

The writing here is incredible, as is the reporting—even by the standards of Truly*Adventurous. Making sense of two very different crimes happening years and hundreds of miles apart, and then weaving them into a narrative that doesn’t feel unwieldy, is an impressive feat.

PS - I absolutely love Truly*Adventurous. Sad that they don’t publish anymore.

He Had a Mental Breakdown Talking to ChatGPT. Then Police Killed Him | Rolling Stone, Free

Like the spotlight story, this one, I’d argue, is comfortably a horror story—just of a very different kind.

I admit that I’m not the biggest supporter of AI, nor am I optimistic about the effects of the technology on humanity, but I’m certainly no doomsayer. I don’t buy the claim that AI will one day suddenly gain sentience and seek to violently supplant us as humans. At least… I used to not believe that. Now I’m not so sure. This story opened my eyes to just how gruesome the possibilties are with AI.

The Great Egg Heist | The Washington Post, Free

This one was fun—which isn’t something I thought I’d say about a crime-slash-heist story. It’s very obvious that the writers pushed hard to make this light-hearted. It shows in the writing. I especially enjoyed the bits where they explained how their sources liked their eggs done.

But scratching past the surface of this story shows that it goes much deeper and becomes much more profound than it lets on. Yes, there’s the crime of the stolen eggs, but I really liked how they also angled Cal-Maine’s price gouging as a crime. We need more of that in journalism, I think: to position these corporate maneuvers as illegal (which many of them are) rather than shrewd.

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled | NPR, Free

Case in point: Misleading advertising—if not outright lies—from Big Oil. There have got to be some federal regulations or international pacts that these practices violate. (And still, even if there are none, then this story and the many, many others like it should have pushed world leaders to do something).

Of course, there’s a reason for all of this, and that’s billions of dollars that various industries have pumped into their lobbying efforts, not to mention the deep ties that many businesses have with politicians. But that’s exactly why the media need to be louder, more direct, more explicit about these questionable, it not illegal, unethical and immoral, business practices.

Harvard Hired a Researcher to Uncover its Ties to Slavery. He Says the Results Cost Him His Job: ‘We Found Too Many Slaves’ | The Guardian, Free

I had a hard time figuring out what to write for this article. And I still don’t completely understand why. There’s a whole lot to unpack here, sure, but that’s true for nearly all of the stories I recommend. In fact, I’d argue that this one is, at its core, straightforward: A prestigious, powerful institution postures progressively and asks experts to mine its troubled history, but then doesn’t like what it sees.

It’s an important story, and one that should prompt us to ask some difficult questions about all institutions around us.

I guess that’s where my trepidation about this piece comes from. The Guardian’s approach to the subject feels a bit too… cookie-cutter? A bit too aseptic. A bit too muted and downplayed for how explosive the matter actually is.

Bringing Anastasia Home | Elle, Free

Now this, I’d say, is a definite and confident step in the right direction. Here, Elle is clearly more unapologetic, more candid about a difficult history than The Guardian was above. I appreciate the bravery to address the abuses perpetrated against Indigenous communities, something that I wish the Media (as it were) talked more about.

That said, much of that courage comes from the people in the story: the descendants of these Indigenous women who were stolen from their families and non-profits who did the heavy lifting to bring their remains back home. And there are still some signs of that misplaced objectivity that journalism insists on applying to all of its stories, which often has the effect of minimizing or outright justifying oppression.

The Chinese Adoptees Who Were Stolen | The New Yorker, $

Heartbreaking story. One that illustrates how much pain eugenicist policies—those that seek to shape and control the social makeup—can cause. But also a story of perseverance and of payoffs. The Chinese father in this story was heroic, in my opinion, never once giving up heart that he’d find his daughter. Speaking of: Mia, the girl who was stolen as a child, has an immense depth of empathy and understanding for both of her families. I don’t think I’d have that same level of grace if I’d been in her position.

The Time Capsule That’s as Big as Human History | GQ, $

Interesting story with a premise that should have been right up my alley. Existential questions about our purpose here on earth? Hell yeah. A salt mine? Sign me up!

But for some reason, this one just didn’t click with me. It felt dragging in some places, like the writer was grasping for anything that would have made this story exciting. The character at the heart of it wasn’t terribly interesting, too, which is a rough thing to say about someone. Good story overall, and one that’s bound to make a lot of you guys think about the bigger meaning of life. I just think it lacks heart.

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Until next Monday! 👋