Some interesting things to read this April 8th

Dear Friends,?

I normally don’t write this newsletter so frequently. But since, somehow, 95,000 people signed up in the past week, I reckon I should send a quick note to say: thank you! And welcome! This is my periodic reading list of the best things I’ve read—or listened to. I usually write it once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. My goal is that every edition have at least one thing in which each reader can find delight.?

So … starting with delight, Tuesday was the National Magazine Awards, which is like the Academy Awards for my industry, except none of us wears clothes that fit, no one slapped the host, and we celebrated afterwards by eating spaghetti in Greenpoint, not dancing in LA. But whatever! It was great, and The Atlantic took home the top honor, winning in general excellence for news, sports, and entertainment.?

There were also some amazing stories that won individual categories, and I want to start by pointing to the work of two brilliant friends. If you haven’t already, you absolutely have to read Jennifer Senior’s “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind,” an extraordinary story about the scars left by 9/11, which won the award for best feature writing. There are, Jen writes, “many things you learn about mourning when examining it at close range: It’s idiosyncratic, anarchic, polychrome.” And then there’s Rachel Aviv’s helixed New Yorker profile of psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, who has been simultaneously hailed the “most influential female psychologist of the 20th century” and one whose work “was setting back the progress of women irrevocably.” It’s a story that begins as one thing, turns into another, and then yet another.?

I was also taken by this surreal photographic collage of Rihanna, which Lorna Simpson created for Essence, and which won the award for photography. It somehow combines high-art, traditional magazine aesthetics, and a crazy paper collage. And this New York Times Magazine story by Carina del Valle Schorske, about how it felt to return to New York’s social dancing scene in the brief hot-vaxx summer of 2021 before the pandemic wiped everything out again. “Had New Yorkers always been this beautiful, or had isolation turned my sight psychedelic?,” she writes.

As Amanda Kludt said in her lovely acceptance speech for the award in Lifestyle Journalism, there are magazines that need to cover the war in Ukraine and magazines that need to cover the best food at America’s gas stations. Her publication, Eater, did so wonderfully in this collection of pieces on the most diverse and underrated gas station food you can find on the road in America, from tamales and lamb kabobs to dak bulgogi and salmon jerky. (Also, if you are heading out on a summer road trip this summer to experience all this food, I encourage you to listen to, and offer suggestions to this playlist that my kids and I made recently of pairings of bands with related names—like The Doors + Handel and Vince Staples + The Eraserheads.)

And there has indeed been incredible recent reporting on the war in Ukraine, including this forensic analysis, using satellites, of the bodies in Bucha, which exposed Russian lies and brutality. And this reporting from recently liberated villages. And you should absolutely read this piece by the brave Filipina journalist (and Nobel laureate!) Maria Ressa about how misinformation works. I also really enjoyed this essay about why so many of the predictions people made about how the economy would change because of Covid turned out to be wrong.

If you’re into podcasts, one of my daily favorites is the great Tech Meme Ride Home, which summarizes the best tech news at the end of the day. And this incredible three-part series on the history of spam, and the way that foreign policy connects with culinary tradition. And here is Audrey Tang, one of the smartest people thinking about how digital democracy can work, speaking on the Undivided Attention podcast.

I had coffee yesterday with Kai-Fu Lee, which reminded me that his AI 2041 was one of my absolute favorite books last year. It’s a masterful combination of science fiction and lucid explanation of technological trends. The best book I’ve finished this month—well, I guess the only so far, but it is good!—is Fred Dust’s Making Conversation about how we talk and how we can better listen.

OK, that’s all for now. Thank you again to everyone who signed up and joined. It’s been a pleasure to be able to share all this with you.

Best, *N?