In the fall of 2022, journalist Zarina Zabrisky visits Pripyat and Chornobyl, Ukraine, after being “asked to investigate whether the Russian Army dug trenches in the radioactive zona during the invasion.” She meets with samosel—members of the community who returned to the exclusion zone to try and live out their lives in peace—despite the radioactive fallout of the 1986 nuclear power plant explosion and the Russian army’s 2022 invasion.
The church buried Valentyna’s family house by the river—“like a person”—in 1988. She was born in that house, gave birth to her kids and cared for her grandchildren there. Later, in 1996, her second house was buried too. Then, she buried her husband and, still refusing to leave Chornobyl, moved to a third house. In 2022, Russians came knocking on the door with their machine guns, looking for Nazis.
Water pipes were damaged on the first day of the invasion. Samosely had no power or heat, no communication. All stores were closed. Some tried to climb trees to pick up a cell signal and speak to their family in other parts of Ukraine, but Russian snipers could see them, even in their yards.
“In Chornobyl, we got lucky. They didn’t kill anyone—not a person, not a dog or a cat. Still, Russians robbed the laboratories in town and dug trenches in the Red Forest. As they were finally leaving, retreating, they didn’t have a map and couldn’t figure out which way to flee. They asked us, ‘Which way do we go?’”
She heads outside to meet her son, still talking, “They tried to remove my birthplace, my homeland. But homeland is everything—the walls are holding you up. I tried to leave so many times, but no!—Chornobyl pulls you back. You can’t leave.”
Standing in a doorway, a light curtain billowing in the breeze, she reads me her poem: “The church stands on guard on the hill. It sees everything—yet it is silent. No one’s here to heal the wounds.”
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In the 1960s, Westerners pilgrimaged to Nepal for its cannabis and the region’s so-called hippie trail. But King Birendra outlawed trade of the plant in the ’70s, with a complete ban of cannabis soon after. Now, decades later, Nepal is seeing a movement toward acceptance, and a man named Madan is at the forefront of this green wave, calling himself the country’s first weed influencer. Sean Williams tags along with Madan on a journey from Kathmandu to Thawang to see firsthand how the criminalization of cannabis has affected the lives of people who live there, and to learn what Madan envisions for Nepal’s future if cannabis were legalized.
Nepal laid the foundations for its cannabis tourism industry in 1961, taxing and licensing drug sales from Kathmandu stores that became the talk of the hippie trail. The Eden Hashish Center, the Cabin, and Central Hashish Store, among others, lined a skinny thoroughfare named Jhochhen Tole, or “Freak Street.” A couple of bucks was enough to eat, sleep, shower, and get wasted on some of the best pot on the planet. Each outlet curated a psychedelic menu of fresh buds, brownies, opium-laced joints called “Chinese Crackers,” and, of course, charas, which was typically packaged as a conker-size “temple ball” of hand-rolled resin. “Anyone who has smoked Nepalese hash will never forget their first time,” wrote the American weed trafficker Joseph R. Pietri. “I remember mine: the rush was so strong I had to sit on the floor and hold on.”
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For more than two decades, patients of an OB/GYN named Robert Hadden warned Columbia University that he was sexually inappropriate and abusive. One woman even called the police and had him arrested, but Hadden was allowed to return to work days later. Direct colleagues while in the exam room looked away; his Columbia superiors failed to take action. To date, more than 245 patients have alleged that the obstetrician abused them, and the institution—a prestigious one committed to “the highest standards of ethical conduct”—continues to aggressively fights new lawsuits from his victims. This is a piece of tremendous reporting—but it’s also deeply triggering and upsetting.
On an October morning, Monson went to her first appointment with Hadden, and they proceeded from a get-to-know-you chat in his office to an exam room. Monson knew immediately that the breast check, prolonged and whole-handed, was not normal; she asked Hadden if he’d felt something concerning. She remembers that during both the breast and pelvic exams, the medical assistant turned her back to face the counter as if she had something to do there. But the counter was empty. As soon as Hadden left the room, Monson felt the assistant’s eyes boring into her. “I felt like she was telling me, ‘Don’t come back,’” Monson says. She did not fully process that she had been sexually assaulted until hours later, sitting alone on her sofa. “It was like a revelation,” she says. “I just suddenly knew. I was just sobbing. I understood what had happened.”
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Biographers who write about power and innovation often acquire a certain cachet. That’s certainly the case with celebrity author Walter Isaacson, whose new 600-pager on Elon Musk is all but guaranteed to be one of the bestselling nonfiction titles of the year. As Shawn McCreesh’s profile for New York Magazine makes clear, journalistic proximity to the world’s richest person makes for an interesting story in and of itself. Though questions persist about whether that proximity influences Isaacson’s reporting, there’s no doubt that the native Louisianan tells a hell of a story.
Isaacson is a particular type of biographer. His book is driven by listen-to-everyone-he-can access. It is not the Robert Caro approach with granular, yearslong reportage on the nature and implications of Musk’s power. Washington Post’s Will Oremus wrote in his September 10 review that “the larger concern is whether Isaacson’s heavy reliance on Musk as a primary source throughout his reporting kept him too close to his subject. Swaths of the book are told largely through Musk’s eyes and those of his confidants.” The book is scrupulously unsnarky — don’t expect the tone of the book Joe Hagan wrote on Jann Wenner. “It is pure narrative storytelling; there’s not preaching in there,” says Isaacson. “People will come away from this book, if they admire Musk, with more evidence that they would like. If they hate Musk, they’ll come away with more evidence to reinforce their dislike of him. Hopefully, there will be a large group of readers who’ll say, ‘Wow, I get it, it’s more complex, and there’s not simply one way to look at it.’”
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Paul Landis, one of Jacqueline Kennedy’s Secret Service agents, supposedly found a bullet lodged in the car’s back seat that infamous day in Dallas. What would this mean if true? James Robenalt sets out to analyze the bullet’s significance in a clinical manner, with his lack of hysteria and careful analysis making up for his somewhat dry approach. There are countless words on this subject, but this essay gives potentially new—and interesting—information rather than another rehash.
Then came November 22, 1963. A month after returning from Greece, Landis stood on the right rear running board of the Secret Service follow-up car, code-named “Halfback,” in the president’s motorcade as the vehicle headed from Dallas’s Love Field airport to a luncheon at the city’s Trade Mart. Landis was approximately 15 feet away when Kennedy was mortally wounded, a close witness to unspeakable horror.
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Jenisha Watts | The Atlantic | September 13, 2023 | 11,129 words
Journalist Jenisha Watts was raised in Kentucky, in part by her mom Trina Renee Watts, and in part by her granny. At one time, Trina was a promising track star. She loved words and was accepted to Western Kentucky University. But when she became pregnant with Jenisha, she dropped out. Soon, Trina was addicted to drugs, with five children from five different fathers, often leaving the kids alone when she left to get high. How did everything go wrong, seemingly so suddenly? Jenisha, a senior editor at The Atlantic, unravels a tangled family history skein by skein, discovering that Trina was sexually abused by her stepfather, Big Dishman, childhood trauma that became generational when Trina spiraled into addiction. Jenisha goes to Florida to live with relatives; her siblings went into the child welfare system. They never gained a stable living situation, causing damage that spurred their own addictions. This is a very tough read. It is a master class in craft, a bold testament to courage in the face of repeated humiliation. The final line of this piece is the most triumphant and inspiring sentence I have read this year. I won’t spoil it for you. It speaks to a truth: that we come into this world with part of our story written for us unless we can stand up, take the pen, and start to write the story for ourselves. —KS
Aymann Ismail and Mary Harris | Slate | September 10, 2023 | 3,418 words
“Alive is better than clean.” This belief guides the operators who talk to drug users who dial the Never Use Alone (NUA) hotline, a service they can call while they use alone. If they become unresponsive during the call, the operator then sends help. This moving story by Aymann Ismail—a companion piece to Mary Harris’ This American Life episode—follows Jessica Blanchard, one such operator in Southwest Georgia, who takes these calls from her cellphone. Blanchard, a former nurse and NUA’s education director, is also a mother to an addict; she has a “mama spirit,” a sixth sense, and knows within a few minutes of talking to someone whether she’ll need to call EMS. Critics ask: Does this approach to overdose prevention enable drug use? Isn’t supplying your own daughter with a clean needle a step in the wrong direction? Blanchard is nonjudgmental, caring, and quite literally an angel, giving each person on the other end of the line another chance. As Ismail shows, the work of NUA makes a strong case for harm reduction, and how treating others with dignity is not only compassionate, but life-saving. —CLR
Elizabeth Kolbert | The New Yorker | September 4, 2023 | 8,276 words
David Gruber is the kind of man who contemplates such questions as “What would a fluorescent shark look like to another fluorescent shark?” He’s the kind of man I want to read about. One of the founders of the Cetacean Translation Initiative—Project CETI for short—Gruber is currently trying to decode sperm whale click patterns. In a nutshell: he wants to talk to whales. (I presume he has questions for them, too.) Animals having language can be a fraught topic in the scientific community, but Gruber has gathered an impressive group that includes big names from the artificial intelligence field. The theory is that with enough data machine learning, algorithms could be taught to understand whale clicks. However, getting the data requires sticking a recording device on a suction cup to the back of a whale—no mean feat, particularly with a reporter watching. Despite the odd wayward recording device merrily bopping about the Caribbean Sea, the team is persevering. I am glad. A lot is at stake with the development of AI models, but a better understanding of nature would be in the plus column. This piece gives you a lot to think about but rewards you with some incredible scenes I will let you read to discover. —CW
Wyatt Williams | The Bitter Southerner | September 4, 2023 | 6,303 words
When I opened the email from The Bitter Southerner on September 5, I saw that they were sharing a new piece about Lucinda Williams. They had my attention. Then I noticed the author: Wyatt Williams (no relation). I sat up straight. I remembered Williams from “Eating the Whale” at Harper’s Magazine, a piece I savored, start to finish. That feeling when you know something is going to be good, so very good? I had it. I ingested this piece over a few days because I didn’t want it to be over. Williams’ mother and the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams were born a few months apart in Louisiana in 1953, though this is no mere profile of Lucinda or a survey of the author’s personal history. Williams traces her voice through his life from childhood car rides to porch evenings spent listening to her songs with his mother, songs that evoke the “idea of Louisiana,” a waterlogged place slowly being washed away, populated by people trying to get by despite poverty, abuse, and alcoholism. What captivated me about this piece is that Williams by no means comes to terms with his mixed feelings about his home state, even after a deep study of Lucinda’s work, saying, “But if you asked for an explanation why I love this place, the only answer would be just the same as why I hate it.” What you end up with is a profound portrait of a place and a family, where if you look hard enough, beauty still resides if you choose to see it. —KS
Jackson Wald | GQ | September 13, 2023 | 2,725 words
When you first meet James Grammer, the central character of this underdog sports tale, you’d be forgiven for thinking something along the lines of this again? The seeming disconnect of a white sumo wrestler, or any athlete in a sport that tradition (or racism) has deemed “not theirs,” has fueled many a glib fish-out-of-water piece. Thankfully, Jackson Wald’s story fully ignores that trope, and Grammer becomes one of the most interesting people I met this week. While sumo has grown in the U.S. over the past few years, it’s still a curiosity; when Grammer and his fellow enthusiasts began practicing in a Brooklyn park, they had to deal with onlookers asking to join or even betting on their matches. Grammer wants to be a champion, but the charm of his story lies less in his quest for greatness than in his human complexity. Before a match, most sumos think about their opponents’ weakness. Not Grammer. “As a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism,” Wald writes, “he believes in a series of deities, including ones that are fierce and wrathful, and that as he’s staring his opponent directly in the eyes, he imagines he and his opponent as two forearm hairs on one of the evil deities, blowing against each other in the wind.” Yes, you’ll find the hallmarks of a good niche sports piece—a giant boa constrictor, a guy who seems to want to be a samurai, Wald sparring with the 340-found Grammer to predictable results—but it’s Grammer himself you’ll remember, and particularly the man he is outside the dohyo. —PR
Lane Brown | Vulture | September 6, 2023 | 3,179 words
Critics are everywhere; great critics, not so much. But all of them have seen their influence wane over the past 15 years, as the Mitchells and Dargises of the world have been subsumed by Rotten Tomatoes and its nuance-flattening Tomatometer score. Why? It’s gameable. (Also, as filmmaker Paul Schrader points out, “audiences are dumber.” No argument there.) Lane Brown digs into the rottenness, aided by one of the grossest lede images you’ll ever see at the top of a magazine feature. —PR
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In some ways, Jackson Wald’s look at sumo in NYC is a typical scrappy-band-of-enthusiasts subculture story. In others, it’s a sports-underdog story. And perhaps most surprisingly, it’s a portrait of a man for whom sumo simply makes sense. A memorable profile, disguised in a mawashi.
Practice was scarce today; a combination of injuries and a muggy, dense rain enveloping New York City kept the vast majority of its six members home for the weekend. Grammer quickly gave me a tour of his home—the bookshelves lined with thick texts on poetry, art, and existentialism, the kitchen stocked full of his sumo-training nutrients, and the dohyo itself, marked off in his living room by wedges of black electrical tape. And then we got to the matter at hand: it was time for Grammer and I to train.
Practice began with 100 shiko, an exercise that combines a deep squat with high leg raises, each motion ending with an emphatic stomp. Next came 100 teppo, or pillar strikes. We positioned ourselves on opposite sides of Grammer’s living room and began methodically hitting the supporting columns of his walls. (Grammer does 300 of these a week, and if you look closely enough at a patch near the living room window, you’ll see a long, lightning-bolt-shaped crack stretching from the top of the frame to the base of the wall: residual damage from the repeated blows). After five minutes of suriashi, a squatted walk around the dohyo, we partnered up and transitioned into butsukari—each of us taking turns, in a waltz-like rhythm, striking the other’s breast as we shuffled diagonally across the ring. By this point, only thirty minutes into the training, I was drenched in a coat of communal sweat, and my hips were screaming in pain. A wave of apprehension washed over me— primarily because the Beya’s technique coach had just walked through the door, and that meant it was time to spar.
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