Hi 👋 

It’s TLR time! Ready for another week of longform reading?✨

Days are starting to look up for me! Not quite there yet: Body still feels like sh*t most days and my day job continues to be merciless. But there’s some progress, at least. I’m fine with it being slow.

Just a kind reminder that you are all free to hit me up and send me your own longform recommendations. That’s been picking up in the last few weeks and it’s honestly been giving me random and very much welcome serotonin boosts throughout the day.

In any case, if you missed last week’s email, here are some standout selections:

• A genetic killer and the mom who took the fall.

• Royal scams.

• Trouble at one of the country’s most exclusive camps.

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!

Story in Spotlight

Thought I’d be newsy this edition… with a story from 2014.

With the tsunami scare last week, I thought this one might resonate. But even if not, there’s such a wealth of interesting bits here. On a very shallow, surface level, this story dives into the loss and destruction and pain that a tsunami leaves in its wake. To be sure, it tackles that in an incredibly unique way: By looking at and interrogating cases of people who were possessed by the regretful spirits of those killed by the disaster; and by following one particular ‘priest’ who helped put these spirits to rest.

Now, a few caveats: I know some of you might reflexively be rolling your eyes at this. But please just give it a try. It’s not just some weird folk-y story blowing some disproven phenomenon out of proportion for clicks. I also know that others might reflexively feel too guarded or defensive (as I was). After all, articles that try to make fun of local traditions—or even those that mean well but misrepresent customs and slip into offensive stereotyping—have become way too common.

And I will admit that there were some shaky parts here, if that’s the lens we’re going to use. But for the most part, this story was very respectful of how the Japanese treat death and how the culture makes it plausible for these possessions to have actually happened. And it doesn’t try to explain the phenomenon in an overly scientific way. It doesn’t paint the ‘priest’ as a kook. It doesn’t make fun, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t paint the possessions as some form of backward thinking. It isn’t even skeptical about the entire thing.

Instead, there was this overall sense of curiosity from the POV of the writer, who is an Englishman. I’d even argue that there was reverence, at least in some spots, which honestly is incredibly refreshing. And which in my opinion makes this well worth your time.

Long and can get the tiniest bit slow in some areas. But really compelling. Maybeee 50 minutes.

The Longform List

Tracking the Elusive Western Shoe Tree | Outside Magazine, $

Really fun, if a bit unorthodox, Outside essay. I admit that this one took a bit to hit its stride for me, but when it did, I was completely sold. There is a certain weirdness to this essay that, in my opinion, has been missing from the Travel genre. Not to mention the writer’s attempt to search for the titular shoe trees as blind as he could.

I do have to say: Even coming out the other side of it, it’s the sheer… whimsy? of this story that stands out to me. Weird is, I’d say, the perfect word to describe it. Weird in the best ways possible.

After the Miracle | California Sunday, Free

Holy shit. This was some of the best tech reportage and writing I’ve seen this year so far. It’s really unfortunate that California Sunday is no longer publishing, because this is the caliber of work that it used to consistently put out.

The tech sectors of the U.S. and India are very intimately and inseparably intertwined, and this story dives fully into that relationship. But as you’d expect, things get complicated real quick: There’s a multibillion-dollar boom and a Donald Trump-fueled bust, leaving thousands of Indians in the lurch. This story puts up a heroic effort to try and untangle that history and the fall-out.

There’s a lot of other stories that can germinate off of this, and I’d really want one that looked more deeply (and more honestly) at the xenophobic undertones here.

The Ghosts of the Glacier | GQ, $

Hmm. This difficult for me because I was hooked into it by a blurb that positioned it as a True Crime story. A story of bodies being found buried in ice. And that, technically, is true—but it’s definitely not True Crime. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that; just that there were expectations unmet).

If anything, this is more of a climate story that takes some very heartwarming turns. It’s very understated—which I think is a shortcoming of the piece—but this story was able to show nearly perfectly how the unimaginably large force of global heating weaves inseparably with our personal lives. That’s something that the entire climate media has been trying to achieve (and largely been failing at) since forever.

How a Single Overdose Unraveled an Empire of Heroin | The New York Times, $

I haven’t been feeling the NYT lately, but it really does pay to have an outlet that you can rely on to deliver at least a high baseline of quality for longform writing. Reporting here is really good, and the way it’s presented makes it crystal clear that the Sacklers (who, if you don’t know, is the family behind the U.S. opioid crisis) are demons. Just have to say that sometimes the writing here feels over-indulgent. That might be a nitpick but I think we can raise our bars higher for the self-styled biggest publication in the world.

The Nighthawks of the Giant | The Threepenny Review (Longreads), Free

Hmm. This one was difficult for me. I think a lot of it went over my head, but just based on vibes alone, I think it’s well worth a spot on this list. I took what I could from this essay, and what I took from it was an overall sense of nostalgia, of looking back—fondly, wistfully—on times of personal struggle, and of finding pockets of safety and of peace despite everything.

PS - This was shared to me by a reader, who at this point I think has a perfect grasp on the types of essays that I don’t typically read but would really appreciate.

Rise and Fall of the House of Bitcoin | Rest of World, Free

I must have some subconscious beef with RoW, because whenever I read a story of theirs, I can never really completely get over the fact that they chose to give their publication that unfortunate, unfortunate name. And I know that they did that as a tongue-in-cheek thing, sort of as a critique of how companies call anything that’s not the U.S. as Rest of World.

But does that critique work when majority of the editorial board is in the NYC Media circuit? And when it puts out stories like these, that are solid, sure, but play into some tired stereotypes? I’d say no. That’s sad because this story could have been really, really good.

The Big Fight Over 403 Very Small Wasps | WIRED, $

Putting this here because I know some truly dedicated science nerds read this newsletter (people after my own heart!), and nothing activates us quite like a taxonomic scandal. And on that front, this story delivers in spades. Research is well-done, and it’s always a delight to embed with a scientist who’s on the fringes of the field. The writing threw me off, though. It feels like one of those science stories that tries too hard to make its language more accessible that it ends up using… weird words and clunky turns of phrases. Maybe I’m nitpicking here but I really dislike that.

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! 👋