EDITOR'S NOTE: Hello again! We're excited to hand things over to this week's guest editor, Charlie Warzel, the writer of Galaxy Brain—a newsletter about technology and big ideas. Before that, he was a writer-at-large for The New York Times Opinion page. Before the Times, Warzel was a senior technology writer at BuzzFeed News. He writes about how technology shapes politics and culture. He covers the ever-shifting media landscape, the rise in digital disinformation, and the changing needs of workers in a post-pandemic world. He is the co-author of a book on the future of work (out in December). In his spare time, he blogs about his dogs. He lives in Missoula, Montana.
The SLR is all yours, Charlie…
You’re all catching me at a weird moment. On Monday I frantically booked and took my first flight in 18 months back home to Ohio to say goodbye to a loved one while there was still time. I spent the week by the bedside of my 95 year-old grandmother who was recently transferred to hospice care. On the flight, I anxiously attempted to plan the coming week in my head. I wanted to make the most of our time together. I asked friends and even complete strangers what they wished they’d asked their grandparents before they died and I wrote out a list of questions for Grandma that I hoped would help me rise to this moment. I’m the reporter in the family and the storyteller. I approached and coped with this sad, existential moment in our lives the only way I knew how: by ‘going to work.’
I wanted to ask her what she did for fun as a child. I wanted to know more about my grandfather, who died when I was just seven. What I wanted most was to unlock that magical door that sometimes opens in an interview, where a series of questions triggers a tangent you didn’t expect—one that reveals something new and profound. What I wanted was to know who Grandma really was, before it was too late.
As soon as I saw her, I threw out the script. There was too much that needed to be done. Grandma needed care, not to be the subject of a “60 Minutes” sit-down. We did get our moments of quiet, though, and I managed to rattle off a few questions. It seemed inconceivable to her that she could have been born before the Depression and “The War”—before what many consider modern life. And yet, her every detail was vivid. Summers playing baseball in abandoned lots; winters sledding down the steep neighborhood hills. She told me how, while digging a victory garden during the Second World War, she came upon a huge bag of old arrowheads, buried long ago by the area’s indigenous peoples. Grandma, at 95, is a bridge, connecting history to the present.
When she would fall asleep, I would scroll my phone, reading many of the pieces that I’ve linked to below. I told her about a few of them and we talked about how different life today felt compared to her youth (it was the week Jeff Bezos went to space, after all). Her response to every story I summarized was the same: “What a world we live in,” she said.
It was in that spirit that I selected the stories below. Each one of them is a time capsule. Taken together, they offer a portrait of life in 2021. Like my grandmother’s stories, they are entertaining and immersive. They help make sense of the world, if only by highlighting how messy life is. These kinds of stories, I’ve come to realize this week, are a gift.
Near the end of one tale, a stemwinder about my grandfather’s job as a car salesman, she looked at me and laughed. “Oh, I’ve got stories, don’t I?” she said.
She sure does. And now, this morning, you have some, too. What a world we live in.
Jack Thomas’ meditation on life and his impending death arrived in my feed at exactly the right moment. His dispatch from a terminal diagnosis is both heart-breaking and funny and contains the kind of earned wisdom of a life well-lived. In the last year, especially, we have been surrounded by uncertainty and the spectre of death. Living in a pandemic has forced us to wrestle with heavy, existential questions about what it means to live with purpose and to die with dignity. Many of these thoughts and feelings are hard to put into words, which makes Thomas’ essay a true gift for us all. The piece is an ode to family, friends, jazz, Julia Child, and everyone he met along the way. It is life-affirming in the most literal sense: Thomas reminds us not to take our days above ground for granted.
Watching the Watchmen
By Jessica Garrison and Ken Bensinger for BuzzFeed News (~45 minutes)
The militia-backed plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in the fall of 2020 is a harrowing story that seems to intersect with every contentious element of modern American life. Jessica Garrison and Ken Bensinger, two stalwart investigative reporters, expertly weave together extensive interviews and tens of thousands of pages of court and law enforcement documents to tell the tale. This is a story about the troubling rise of right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism—both on and offline. But it is also a story about polarized politics, the role of law enforcement, free speech, and the fracturing of reality that’s left us all feeling quite anxious about the future.
Do you remember ‘Snow Fall,’ the 2012 New York Times feature that set the bar for interactive online storytelling? Well, this piece is the clear heir to that Pulitzer-winning achievement. The piece marries its fascinating subject, Adam Ondra, arguably the best climber in the world, with a deep look at Olympic climbing and its fraught decision to include speed climbing into global competition. But while the story is captivating, the true delight is the interactive element. The Times visual team (which, I can say from first-hand experience, is the paper’s not-so-secret weapon) blends audio, video, 3-D animation to make the sport of climbing come alive. It is the type of piece that is not only a work of art, but helps you understand and appreciate all the skill and difficulty of a sport that is ascending in popularity. I’ve never seen anything like it. (And if you like that piece, the NYT did similar ones for gymnastics, swimming, and hurdling).
If you didn’t know who Giannis Antetokounmpo was, you probably found out this week when the Greek basketball phenom propelled the Milwaukee Bucks to its first NBA championship since 1971. In this piece, excerpted from her forthcoming book, Mirin Fader walks us through the years that transformed Giannis from a promising-but-goofy rookie, into the intimidating, fiercely competitive MVP he’s become. Like any great feature, you don’t have to be a sports fan to appreciate Fader’s in-depth reporting and storytelling. At heart, this is a piece about complicated player-coach dynamics and coming of age. I’m obsessed with stories that help you understand how greatness—in any pursuit—is cultivated. This story is a masterclass in that art.
I’m going to include a few stories here that capture the state of the pandemic as we enter the mid-to-late summer. Susan Matthews’ piece is a reported survey of our current moment, which is a mix of gratitude for reopenings, vaccine hesitancy, and a genuine fear that covid’s delta variant may send us back into the dark days of 2020. The author has received some understandable pushback for not discussing the impacts of Long Covid on the vaccinated, but, nonetheless, I found the piece extremely helpful. Matthews asks and tries to answer the big question on our minds: What is your responsibility if you're a vaccinated person in the world just trying to do the right thing for yourself/those around you?
I’ve appreciated Katherine Wu’s writing throughout the pandemic. This piece builds on the theme of the one I listed above and wrestles with the notion of what I call ‘covid backsliding’ (aka putting masks back on in public indoor spaces). The mask discussion is contentious and easily devolves into fearmongering and moralizing but Wu cuts through the polarizing culture war issues and focuses on what’s real. “The vaccines don’t feel different, but the conditions they’re working in do,” she writes. When it comes to masking and risk assessment, we’re all, ultimately, on our own. But pieces like this give us a helpful framework to make those choices.
Am I breaking the rules by including a longform video? Well, too bad. The Wall Street Journal set up hundreds of automated TikTok accounts to try and understand what makes TikTok’s (famous and mysterious) recommendation algorithm tick. I have some qualms with their focus on negative content but overall the piece is a great look at the shadowy, technical inner workings of a major social media platform. It’s also a great reminder that recommendation algorithms aren’t magic—they’re a blend of big data surveillance and some pretty obvious assumptions about human preferences.
More than the writing or reporting, I’ve included this piece because it’s such a helpful frame to think about the tech industry and Silicon Valley as a whole right now. As one interviewee in the piece notes, “The economy split in two on about April 7, 2020... one part of the economy suffered greatly, but another did just fine.” David Streitfeld walks us through how tech did more than ‘just fine.’ In fact, the pandemic accelerated tech’s grip on the world economy to such a degree that it might be impossible to reverse. What does that mean for all of us? I don’t know, but this piece opened a door in my brain and assures I’ll be reporting out that angle for years to come.
Sorry! More tech stories (what did you expect!) I always love reading longform interview transcripts. Now, I’ll admit that Mark Zuckerberg is a classically boring interview. But I’ve included this piece because I think it builds on the piece above. Silicon Valley and Zuckerberg have nearly unchecked and unlimited money, power, and influence over our politics, culture and economy. What do they plan to do with that? I think Casey Newton’s interview looks at one possibility. Zuckerberg’s new obsession is essentially a secondary, virtual life, lived immersively in digital spaces. It sounds, at times, dystopian and sci-fi and outlandish. But Zuckerberg is not alone in the pursuit of a metaverse—many powerful tech folks are trotting out the term these days—which means, perhaps we need to pay attention. This is a useful primer.
Wright Thompson is one of my favorite reporters and storytellers. This piece in The Atlantic might be his best work to date. Thompson tells the little known story of the Mississippi barn where Emmett Till was tortured and murdered. The piece is deeply reported and carefully told. It is a story about how we reckon with the injustices of the past and how history is written, forgotten, and rewritten. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
"What would happen, he wondered, if he tried to create a chatbot version of his dead fiancee?" That’s a hell of a premise. And this story delivers. Jason Fagone’s story is a complex emotional portrait of a relationship, a now-deceased woman’s life, a man struggling with grief, and an extremely powerful bit of technology. Stories like these remind me that the future isn’t around the corner, it’s here. The ethical dilemmas of AI will only get thornier.
I love stories that open my eyes to cultural traditions and history that I knew nothing about. Mike Diago’s ode to the Dominican ritual of beach spaghetti is a perfect example of this type of story. Ultimately this is a story about belonging. Diago reminds us that beach spaghetti is never just beach spaghetti. Instead, as the piece notes, “it is a way to mark your presence in public. Saying, ‘We are here, we are human, we have our dignity, and we have our traditions.”
No, You Beg
By Allie Conti for The Cut (~20 minutes)
"New York's ability to turn *everything* into a status game is just breathtaking,” is how Gimlet’s Lydia Polgreen tweeted this New York magazine feature on the bonkers market for rescue dogs during the pandemic. Allie Conti’s piece is a wild look at how the pandemic seems to have changed everything and nothing at the same time. There’s something for everyone to feel superior about in this one. Also recommended is this read from Defector, “If You Really Want A Dog, You Can Get A Damn Dog.”
This is a Colbert profile that does multiple things at once. It’s a look at the comedian, a meditation on what makes Late Night TV work, and a story about working from home. I won’t spoil it, but the best part comes ¾ of the way through, when Colbert Executive Producer Chris Licht talks about the night that CBS’s entire broadcast hinged on a shaky home office wifi connection.
The pandemic sparked a necessary conversation about care work and essential workers. But, as Premilla Nadasen writes, “Implicit in this discourse is that the worth of poor and working-class people of color is important to the degree that they serve and care for the middle and upper classes.” Nadasen’s essay offers a very simple and powerful premise that requires we flip the way we think about essential work. “Every human being is essential, whether they work or not, and should be valued, respected, and protected, regardless of whether they care,” she writes.
“It’s the year 2011, and I can’t get enough of the internet.” That’s how Katie Baker starts this piece on Google Reader and the demise of some of the magical, joyful corners of the internet. Baker’s prose is wonderful and this piece evoked in me not only nostalgia for “good internet” but a real resentment for the ways that platforms and the digital ad industry have corporatized and sanitized parts of the web. But Baker also pushes against the, perhaps, revisionist idea that the web was ever what we thought it was. Anyhow, the piece includes this line, of which I’m wildly jealous: “It’s the year 2021, and I can’t get enough of the internet. This is an admission of defeat.”
The dentist was a few minutes late, so I waited by the barn, listening to a northern mockingbird in the cypress trees. His tires kicked up dust when he turned off Drew Ruleville Road and headed across the bayou toward his house. He got out of his truck still wearing his scrubs and, with a smile, extended his hand: “Jeff Andrews.”
The gravel crunched under his feet as he walked to the barn, which is long and narrow with sliding doors in the middle. Its walls are made of cypress boards, weathered gray, and it overlooks a swimming pool behind a white columned house. Jeff Andrews rolled up the garage door he’d installed.
Our eyes adjusted to the darkness of the barn where Emmett Till was tortured by a group of grown men. Christmas decorations leaned against one wall. Within reach sat a lawn mower and a Johnson 9.9-horsepower outboard motor. Dirt covered the spot where Till was beaten, and where investigators believe he was killed. Andrews thinks he was strung from the ceiling, to make the beating easier. The truth is, nobody knows exactly what happened in the barn, and any evidence is long gone. Andrews pointed to the central rafter.
At some point over the years, Google Reader will start asking me whether I want to sort by magic. I do, and I will click yes. Years later, I’ll still chase that magic, even as I wonder whether it ever existed at all.
Rabble-rouser(2004) By William F. Buckley Jr. for The New Yorker (~35 minutes)
Westbrook Pegler was bigger than George F. Will, more influential than Thomas Friedman, and considered by some to be wittier than Michael Kinsley. Crankier than any other politics and society columnist of his time, he forged his bile into gold, pulling down $1.3 million in today’s money in 1932 from a column that was syndicated to more than 200 papers. For all his wealth, influence, and devoted readers, no journalist who was as widely read as Pegler became forgotten as quickly and absolutely as he did.
Culturally conservative and professionally cruel, he made enemies of the unions, the courts, the rich, and the taxman. Drawing on the skills he had developed as a sportswriter, He claimed to write for the common man, and nobody was safe when trapped in his gunshights. Even his detractors thought he was a funny writer, but the humor doesn’t really play to the 2020s. Still, his name-calling was superb. In Pegler’s view, Franklin Roosevelt was "Moosejaw the First." Eleanor Roosevelt was "La Gab," "La Boca Grande" and "the Empress." Interior Secretary Harold Ickes was "He-Shrew." Clifton Fadiman, "Bull Butterfly of the literary teas." And so on.
William F. Buckley Jr., a friend of Pegler’s, attempted to rehabilitate the man’s reputation in this feature 17 years ago—if you can really rehabilitate someone who was so cruel as to applaud the 1930s lynching of two Californians (Diane McWhorter claimed in Slate that Buckley was way, way too generous). When Pegler finally got the sack in 1962 from his last employer, the Hearst Corp., he temporarily joined forces with the John Birch Society, which quickly dismissed him for anti-Semitism. Buckley gives his old friend the softest of all possible send-offs, quoting this charming line from a letter he wrote when Hearst dumped him: “Some day I will tell you, but for now let it be that I spent 18 years in a whore house but never went upstairs.” Some day never came. Pegler died at the age of 75 in 1969 and was buried in Gate of Heaven cemetery in Westchester County.
Classic Read curator Jack Shafer writes about media for Politico.
The Sunday Still from Patrick Farrell
with Jodi Mailander Farrell
‘THE BONE SHOT’
During the outpouring of a new film, playlist, travel guide and other well-publicized efforts to get closer to a man who took his own life three years ago, photographer Melanie Dunea revisits her cheeky portrait of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in a July 23 article for Vanity Fair, “Bourdain, My Camera, and Me.” Dunea gives a charming account of her longtime relationship with Bourdain and the exchange between them on the day in New York when she snapped what she calls “the bone shot,” starting with the procurement of a giant, slippery bone at a Bleecker Street butcher shop. She also provides insights into what makes a good portrait: “the before” (prep work like researching the subject for context and setting up the lighting) and “the during” (decisive shooting that requires no cropping, building rapport with the subject, being nimble enough to change the plan if it doesn’t feel right, and paying attention to detail, such as no bone slippage). For her 2007 book, “My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals,” Dunea landed on a provocative portrait of Bourdain that captured not only the late chef’s lanky, fit physique, but also his fragile swagger. We can’t seem to take our eyes off of him. Even now.
Patrick Farrell is the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winner for Breaking News Photography for The Miami Herald, where he worked from 1987 to 2019. He is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Media Management at the University of Miami School of Communication.
Jodi Mailander Farrell is a former Miami Herald reporter and editor who is an adjunct writing instructor in the School of Communication at the University of Miami.
Loved this book. It's about why you should talk to strangers now, in an increasingly vaccinated world, and why we've been talking to them forever: Our lives and the propagation of the species depended on it.
That's one of the more counter-intuitive takes in this debut from Joe Keohane, a dear friend and longtime journalist. Our tribal forebears in the 200,000 years preceding our own were not nearly as tribal and warlike and suspicious of the stranger as we suspected them to be. Cooperation was needed between groups to ensure both had enough food or water or shelter. This led to the development of cultures which led to the agricultural revolution which THEN led to war as we know it. But because there's been 200,000 years of evolutionary development, we need to talk to strangers today to feel psychologically whole—another counter-intuitive finding in a book full of them.
The Power of Strangers is a mix of such anthropological and psychological studies, but don't worry: Joe is funny as hell so his book is, too.
He'll join The Salon next Friday for a chat about it and the craft of reporting and writing across multiple disciplines.
Paul Kix is a best-selling author, an editor, and the host of the podcast, Now That's a Great Story, where novelists, journalists, screenwriters and songwriters talk about their favorite work, the one that reveals their artistic worldview. For insights from writers that go beyond what's covered in the podcast, like the entry above, please sign up for Paul's newsletter.
Leon Bridges has been nothing short of a revelatory breath of fresh air since gaining notoriety in 2015 following the release of Coming Home, his stellar debut LP for Columbia Records. It wasn't just his backstory as a steakhouse dishwasher in Fort Worth, Texas that endeared Bridges to the masses, of course. Coming Home came packed with the kind of groove-filled R&B-flavored soul that's simultaneously a throwback, timelessly classic and vibrantly current.
With 2018's Good Thing, Bridges brilliantly soared beyond any chance there might have been a sophomore slump. The writing on his second record showed a more intimate, personal side and the musicality of the record defied easy R&B categorization to a satisfying degree. With Gold Digger's Sound, his third full-length studio record, Bridges continues his surging trajectory into continued excellence. Give it a spin, and hear why the New York Times Jon Pareles says that Bridges "offers his personalized survival strategy for Southern soul" on this album.
Kelly Dearmore is a freelance journalist from Dallas, TX. His work has appeared in Texas Monthly, The Dallas Morning News, Sounds Like Nashville, Paste, American Songwriter, Lone Star Music and more.
As we speed toward the release of James Gunn’s big budget THE SUICIDE SQUAD film, comic book fan site Newsarama smartly re-ran this 2016 feature on the comics that inspired the film—and it’s pseudo-predecessor. The Suicide Squad comic, written by the legendary John Ostrander, with art by Luke McDonnell, was about a ragtag group of DC villains looking for early parole by acting as government agents—and putting their lives on the line for the country. The series was sharply-written and loaded with suspense, action, and meaningful character development—and deaths. It was that air of the unexpected that kept readers on their toes, and coming back. Smith is smart enough to step back and let the talent look back on their victories, and it makes for a meaningful and entertaining read.
Alex Segura is a novelist and writer of comic books and podcasts. He is also Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Oni Press. His latest, Star Wars Poe Dameron: Free Fall, is out now from Disney Books.
I used to sing with Teddy Grossman way back when. His voice is among the best voices I’ve ever encountered. This week he released one of his first big singles of his music career. It is one of my favorite songs of the last few years. I guarantee you that you will love it.
The Sunday Cartoons from Gus D'Angelo and Jake Goldwasser
“Just Because”
Gus D’Angelo roams about San Francisco with cheap ballpoint pens and overpriced Moleskines. “Sparaboom!” is his somewhat-serial, somewhat-animated, somewhat-comic strip.
Jake Goldwasser is a cartoonist for The New Yorker and Weekly Humorist, as well as an incoming poetry candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. You can follow his work on his website and on Instagram.
Founder, Editor: Don Van Natta Jr. Producer, Editor: Jacob Feldman Producer, Junior Editor: Étienne Lajoie Senior Recycling Editor: Jack Shafer Senior Photo Editor: Patrick Farrell Senior Music Editor: Kelly Dearmore Senior Podcast Editor: Jo Piazza Senior Editor of Esoterica: Ryan M. Rodenberg Senior Originals Editor: Peter Bailey-Wells Sunday Comics Editor: Alex Segura Senior Fiction Editor: Wadzanai Mhute Sunday Cartoonists: Gus D’Angelo, Jake Goldwasser
Digital Team: Nation Hahn, Nickolaus Hines, Megan McDonell, Alexa Steinberg Podcast Team: Peter Bailey-Wells, Cary Barbor, Julian McKenzie, Jonathan Yales Webmaster: Ana Srikanth Campus Editor: Peter Warren Junior Producers: Joe Levin, Emma Peaslee, Veronica Dickson La Rotta
Contributing Editors: Bruce Arthur, Shaun Assael, Nick Aster, Jody Avirgan, Alex Belth, Sara J. Benincasa, Jonathan Bernstein, Sara Blask, Greg Bishop, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Maria Bustillos, Steve Caruso, Kyle Chayka, Chris Cillizza, Doug Bock Clark, Anna Katherine Clemmons, Stephanie Clifford,Rich Cohen, Jessica Contrera, Jonathan Coleman, Pam Colloff, Ruby Cramer, Bryan Curtis, Seyward Darby, Maureen Dowd, Charles Duhigg, Brett Michael Dykes, Geoff Edgers, Kate Fagan, Jodi Mailander Farrell, Hadley Freeman, Lea Goldman, Michael N. Graff, Megan Greenwell, Bill Grueskin, Justine Gubar, Maggie Haberman, Reyhan Harmanci, Virginia Heffernan, Matthew Hiltzik, Jena Janovy, Bomani Jones, Chris Jones, Peter Kafka, Jordan Kisner, Paul Kix, Mina Kimes, Peter King, Steve Krakauer, Michael Kruse, Tom Lamont, Edmund Lee, Chris Lehmann, Will Leitch, Steven Levy, Jon Mackenzie, Glynnis MacNicol, Drew Magary, Erik Malinowski, Jonathan Martin, Betsy Fischer Martin, Jeff Maysh, Jack McCallum, Soraya Nadia McDonald, Susan McPherson, Ana Menendez, Kevin Merida, Katherine Miller, Heidi N. Moore, Kim Morgan, Diana Moskovitz, Eric Neel, Kevin Nguyen, Joe Nocera, Olivia Nuzzi, Ashley R. Parker, Anne Helen Petersen, Elaina Plott, Joe Posnanski, S.L. Price, Nausicaa Renner, Jennifer Romolini, Julia Rubin, Albert Samaha, Bob Sassone, Bruce Schoenfeld, Michael Schur, Joe Sexton, Ramona Shelburne, Jacqui Shine, Alexandra Sifferlin, Rachel Sklar, Dan Shanoff, Harry Shearer, Ben Smith, Deborah Sontag, Adam Sternbergh,Matt Sullivan, Wright Thompson, Pablo Torre, Ian Urbina, Kevin Van Valkenburg, Krithika Varagur, Nikki Waller, John A. Walsh, Charlie Warzel, Seth Wickersham, Karen Wickre, Dan Zak and Dave Zirin
Contributor in memoriam: Lyra McKee 1990-2019
Header image: Hannah Price
Publishing Partner: Ruth Ann Harnisch
You can read more about our staff, peruse past editions and contact us (we'd love to hear from you!) on our website: sundaylongread.com. Help pick next week's selections by forwarding us your favorite stories by email—editors@sundaylongread.com—or via Twitter: #SundayLR.
A Word From Our Publishing Partner
Can you swim? If yes, where’d you learn? Me, maybe three or four years old, Lime Lake, near Buffalo. OK, that’s not true. I didn’t actually learn how to swim there. I merely improvised ways not to drown when my Dad kept throwing me off the dock into deep water. He was a lifeguard, apparently convinced this was brilliant training.
A lot of people never get close enough to deep water to learn how to not to drown. Heather McGhee reminds us some white people would rather shut the community pool down rather than allow races to mix in (chlorinated!) water. Black people have historically been denied access to venues, facilities, natural areas, and means of learning not to drown. Others are culturally thwarted from learning not to drown, too. Over a decade ago, I heard about a friend’s school project: creating “modest swim” hours for Muslim women at a local pool, with curtains on the windows for privacy. What can YOU do to help more people enjoy water safely? Here are some groups making it happen, compiled by Diversity In Aquatics (h/t Anti-Racism Daily). Teach your kids how not to drown! Just don’t use my Dad’s lesson plan. That $#!+ is illegal these days.
Enjoy the best longform journalism. Every Sunday.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Hello again! We're excited to hand things over to this week's guest editor, Charlie Warzel, the writer of
