Underrated Reasons To Be Thankful

Dynomight | 27th November 2025

Charmingly specific list. Cardamom tastes expensive and is cheap. When disposed of correctly, disposable plastic is carbon sequestration. About 1% of all humans that have ever lived enjoyed free elections, the rule of law, and civil liberties; that number is now closer to 10%. When things don’t go our way, we can always turn to the comfort of sleep, “a pause that’s somehow neither experienced nor skipped” (1,400 words)

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The Case For Ending Statistical Significance

Davidson Heath | Reason | 1st December 2025

The obsession with statistical significance has misled many sciences into false-positive findings and bias. An alternative might be “estimation culture”, courtesy of William Gosset, who devised a formula using small-sample estimates for quality control in Guinness beer. “Any series of experiments is only of value in so far as it enables us to form a judgement as to the statistical constants of the population” (3,000 words)

The Price Of Remission

David Armstrong | ProPublica | 8th May 2025

Heath reporter investigates the cost of his treatment. After being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, he is prescribed Revlimid, a thalidomide derivative that greatly improves the prognosis for blood cancer patients. Each daily pill costs 25 cents to make yet costs $1,000 to buy. Why? In his journey through the US healthcare system, he uncovers the extraordinary greed that underpins it all (7,200 words)

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Very Important People

Mike Nagel | Dirt | 28th November 2025

Wry musings on meetings between the famous and the non-famous. Most of the time, there is no second beat to a celebrity encounter. There is no deeper connection or "then what". The seeing is the point. Thus, when our narrator gets the chance to spend a whole weekend around famous musicians, his brain short circuits. Should he throw a baked potato at a rock star's head? Just to see what happens? (2,600 words)

Podcast: Kevin | Heavyweight. Astonishing piece of storytelling, about a troubled childhood, the friends that made it bearable, and the unspoken reason why they one day vanished from the neighbourhood (60m 58s)

Video: Maybe This Time | YouTube | Broadway.com | 4m 19s

Extraordinary performance of a pivotal number from the musical Cabaret. Even in this recital setting, without costume or set, the actress disappears into the character completely.

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The Claims Of Close Reading

Johanna Winant | Boston Review | 26th November 2025

As the humanities are sidelined in academia and AI erodes our ability to comprehend text, it is worth returning to the rewarding practice of close reading. Looking at the tiniest details of a poem, scene or prose excerpt, taking it seriously, noticing every minute decision the writer made to arrive at the final product, is a revolutionary skill. It is learning to read as the basis of forming an argument (2,800 words)

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Interview With A YouTube Writer

Anonymous | Human Invariant | 22nd November 2025

The writer interviewed here works for several YouTube channels that have collectively amassed over half a billion views for science and gaming-adjacent videos. His responses provide a glimpse inside the complex workings of a platform that shapes contemporary culture far more than we realise. Almost nobody who posts on YouTube is making much money, but a small group are making a lot (5,100 words)

Revisiting The Thucydides Trap

Noah Millman | Gideon's Substack | 5th February 2025

The "Thucydides trap" describes the geopolitical situation in which an ascending power threatens to displace an established one, often resulting in war. Each action taken in the lead-up to this outcome seems individually logical but results in escalation anyway. Many characterise Sino-American relations this way. What if the answer for the US is not chasing supremacy, but "alliances of convenience"? (2,800 words)

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Don’t Close Your Teeth

Cynthia Zarin | Los Angeles Review Of Books | 17th November 2025

Virginia Woolf's diaries, begun in 1897 and ending just before her death in 1941, are a record of her life but also of fascism's rise in Europe. In 1934, she reads the news of extrajudicial killings in Germany like "an act in a play". The following year, the Woolfs visit Germany and she sees swastikas everywhere; back home, a man shouts abuse in German under her Jewish husband's bedroom window (3,300 words)

The Penicillin Myth

Kevin Blake | Asimov Press | 24th November 2025

Alexander Fleming claimed his discovery of penicillin was by chance. Was it? The story is similar to his earlier discovery of another antibacterial substance, which also involved lucky contamination from an open window. His notebook has an entry dated two months after when he claimed to have discovered the culture plate. For years, scientists have tried to replicate his original discovery. All have failed (7,000 words)

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The Dangerous Rise Of Buddhist Extremism

Sonia Faleiro | Guardian | 25th November 2025

Across Asia, Buddhism is being weaponised by charismatic monks to promote sectarian hatred. One such monk is Gnanasara, whose inflammatory speeches vilify Muslims in Sri Lanka, rousing mobs to loot and torch homes, shops and mosques. Now the hostility is shifting to Christians. Gnanasara once told the press that it was his duty to act against any threat to Buddhism. “Attaining nirvana can wait” (5,700 words)

An Attempt At Exhausting A Place In Paris

Christopher Hawthorne | Punch List | 21st November 2025

Experiments in paying attention. The writer Georges Perec would sit in a plaza and “exhaust” it by naming everything in it, writing entries that read like an experimental poem. “I did feel, as I stood up to leave the square, a significantly sharpened sense of perception, not to mention a pleasing sort of mental calm. This might be a step toward building back up our atrophied powers of attention and observation” (2,000 words)

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In Praise Of Bibliomania

Ed Simon | Literary Hub | 24th November 2025

The desire to read can be sustained by a library card; coveting the book is its own beast. “When I have a little money, I buy books”, wrote Erasmus, “and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes”. Anke Gowda, an Indian sugar plant worker, acquired nearly two-million books. “Photos of his cramped house, where trenches have been made out of piles of books, make me simultaneously anxious and envious” (2,500 words)

The Realities Of Being A Pop Star

Charli XCX | Charli's Substack | 20th November 2025

The architect of "brat summer" has a newsletter. There are great things about being a pop star, she says — you get to wear earrings so valuable they have their own security guards and you can call in sick whenever you want. The less good aspects include the mockery of old friends and all the time spent in "strange and soulless liminal spaces". And the more successful you are, the more paranoid you become (1,800 words)

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Lol I’m Trying To Tell You How It Feels For Me

Harriet Armstrong | Granta | 21st November 2025

Towards a semiotics of the ubiquitous abbreviation "lol". It's short for "laughing out loud" but can mean something quite dark. "Like an exclamation mark, which adds something jovial and upbeat, ‘lol’ indicates that a sentence should be taken less seriously — but this often feels like a sort of mutually understood but unacknowledged mask. Often ‘lol’ conveys a near-explicit desperation to connect" (1,000 words)

Podcast: Why Are There So Many Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes? | There's More To That. Maritime archaeologist explains the fascinating process of diving, recovering and documenting shipwrecks, which she considers to be "time capsules" (32m 39s)

Video: Shanti Rides Shotgun | Vimeo | Voyager | 8m 18s

Heartwarming feature about a take-no-prisoners style driving instructor in New York City.

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The Uses And Abuses Of Manet’s Olympia

Todd Cronan | Nonsite | 3rd January 2025

Édouard Manet's Olympia caused a "firestorm" when first exhibited in 1865. Its subject matter — white model Victorine Meurent formally poses on a bed in the nude while her black maid Laure brings her flowers — provoked over a century of commentary, primarily about the nudity, not the racial dynamics. The "staging and artifice" of Olympia prevents the viewer indulging in false empathy for its figures (2,900 words)

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The Boring Part Of Bell Labs

Elizabeth Van Nostrand | 19th November 2025

What did Bell Labs do in between the moonshot projects like inventing the transistor and solar cells? The writer interviews her father, who was in the applied division, working on things like improving inventory control and designing "slide rulers so salesmen could estimate costs". Interesting throughout. This mundane, industry-applicable work enabled the expensive experimental research (4,400 words)