Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

The baffling case of Karen Read

Editor’s note, June 18, 2025, 4:40 pm ET: On June 18, 2025, Karen Read was found not guilty of the second-degree murder of her boyfriend John O’Keefe. She was found guilty of drunk driving. This was her second trial; to read our rundown of what was different at the retrial, click here. The story below […]

Why the Karen Read retrial ended differently this time

Editor’s note, June 18, 2025, 4:15 pm ET: On June 18, Karen Read was found not guilty of second-degree murder, and found guilty of drunk driving in John O’Keefe’s death. The story below was originally published on May 3, 2025. It’s the same courtroom, the same judge, and nearly all of the same players — […]

How climate change will worsen hunger

Globally, humanity is producing more food than ever, but that harvest is concentrated in just a handful of breadbaskets. More than one-third of the world’s wheat and barley exports come from Ukraine and Russia, for example. Some of these highly productive farmlands, including major crop-growing regions in the United States, are on track to see […]

The Supreme Court’s incoherent new attack on trans rights, explained

It was obvious, if you listened to the Supreme Court’s oral argument in United States v. Skrmetti last December, that the Court would vote — most likely along party lines — to uphold state laws banning many forms of transgender health care for minors. So nothing about Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion in Skrmetti […]

Why are so many straight guys so bad at gossiping? 

What does it mean to be “good” at gossip?  A good gossip doesn’t just tell you that Sally broke up with Joe, they tell you that Sally broke up with Joe just a week after posting a bunch of (now deleted) romantic international vacation pics to Instagram. They don’t simply say “Brittany’s a bad coworker,” […]