Horses and Obituaries

The Ultimate Horse

Sophie Fessl | Works In Progress | 5th August 2026

The ‘thoroughbred’, a type of horse designed for speed, was created in the 1700s from just three exceptional horses imported to England from Arabia. But modern breeders appear to have hit the ceiling on how fast an exceptional horse can run. Why? Horses have had great genetic diversity for thousands of years. Breeders may have bred away the very thing that would allow the horse to keep improving (4,100 words)

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Speaking For The Dead

Sam Roberts | Longreads | 11th August 2026

The NYT’s obituaries reporter looks back. The best obits are in the local dailies: in 2019, the family of Joe Heller placed one in the Hartford Courant, describing him as “a frequent shopper at the Essex Dump” who “left his family with a house full of crap, 300 pounds of birdseed and dead houseplants”. “There wasn’t an occasion too formal or an event too dour that Joe didn’t interrupt with his voluminous snoring” (4,800 words)