The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
April 04, 2025 at 04:30PM
In this edition:
- Redemption on Death Row
- The limits of love
- Biology’s 21st-century Tamagotchi
- Burying the monsters
- Knights in red satin
1. The Last Face Death Row Inmates See
Brenna Ehrlich | Rolling Stone | March 29, 2025 | 6,782 words
Brenna Ehrlich’s profile of the Reverend Jeff Hood is thick with tension from the opening sentence. Hood, “half metal roadie with his bald head and long, ZZ Top beard and quirky glasses, half classic priest,” ministers to men on death row. We meet him before dawn on the day that Emmanuel Littlejohn might be put to death at Oklahoma State Penitentiary, 30 years after he killed a man in a convenience store robbery. Littlejohn is one of Hood’s “guys,” men who are guilty of murder, rape, and sometimes both, men that Hood ministers to anyway, because he believes that everyone is worthy of love and compassion despite what they’ve done in life. Not all of the repulsive behavior in this piece is committed by the men behind bars: Hood has received death threats for his work, including from a 70-year-old man in a pickup truck while Hood was mowing his front lawn. Then there’s the torture committed by the state. The Pardon and Parole board had granted Littlejohn clemency weeks before his execution date, which put his life into the hands of Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt. Stitt, who could mandate Littlejohn’s reprieve or death with a single phone call, was said to be praying on the decision—a performance that was still underway when they came to measure Littlejohn’s arms and legs for the straps and gauge his veins for the needle. (Is there anything more cruel than to dangle mercy in front of a man, just because you can?) This is an emotional read. But when you stick it out to the end as Hood does, you’ll find it to be a true testament to faith, hope, and love. —KS
2. The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons
Yiyun Li | The New Yorker | March 23, 2025 | 8,293 words
“There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes in the opening sentence of her New Yorker essay, quoting the police who arrive at her home to deliver devastating news. As I’ve struggled to encapsulate this excerpt from Li’s forthcoming book, Things in Nature Merely Grow, I find myself returning to that same phrase. There is no good way to say this: Li lost both of her sons, Vincent and James, to suicide, six years apart, at 16 and 19. Li writes through her grief, exploring the limitations of language and literature, wrestling with the balance between trusting one’s intuition and letting go, and sitting with the impossibility of ever fully understanding the inner worlds of others, especially our loved ones. “What can parents do but give their children the space to be, and allow them to do what they need so that they can become more fully themselves?” she asks. “And yet, despite the parents’ efforts, and despite all the beings and doings that occur as the children grow, some among them die before their time.” This essay is difficult to read, and yet Li writes with lucidity and steadiness, guiding us through the deep end. I emerged stunned after reading it, and needed some time simply to collect myself. Perhaps there is no good way to say any of this, just as there is no one way to process and express grief. But Li’s words remind us that we are not alone in trying. —CLR
3. The Worm That No Computer Scientist Can Crack
Claire L. Evans | Wired | March 26, 2025 | 2,349 words
“No, not a worm like Stuxnet,” writes Claire L. Evans, referring to the malicious software that disrupted Iranian nuclear centrifuges more than a decade ago. “A worm like Richard Scarry.” Specifically, C. elegans—a nematode, “barely as long as a hair is wide, with less than a thousand cells in its body.” This worm’s apparent biological simplicity makes it a popular subject for study; on its minuscule back sits a heap of Nobel Prize-winning research. For more than a decade, a project called OpenWorm has sought to create a perfect replica of C. elegans, sucking up data from researchers to grant it virtual life inside a computer. On one hand, Evans writes, the result might be merely “the world’s most sophisticated Tamagotchi.” On the other, “it can be a stepping stone toward understanding more complex nervous systems and eventually, someday, the human mind.” Evans digs deep with the worm people, as she calls them, who liken their efforts to “a cathedral” and “a NASA moonshot.” OpenWorm is also open-source: From her home in Los Angeles—and on the brink of the recent wildfires—Evans grabs some code and attempts her own worm, which manages a slight movement after hours of computer processing. (Don’t forget to click “Play” on John Provencher’s art and send code worms wriggling across your screen.) Evans is a superlative guide to the frontiers of virtual nematodes, delivering crisp and engaging explanations while keeping an eye on the world beyond her story. As that world asserts itself—as wildfire ash accumulates in her home—Evans’ story becomes expansive, a consideration of aliveness. This is a technically complex tale with a deeply human one hidden inside. A Trojan worm, if you will. —BF
4. Unburying the Remains of the Third Reich
Nicholas Casey | The New York Times | March 27, 2025 | 7,089 words
Until reading this piece, I had never heard of the Volksbund group. Now that I have, I am unsure how to feel about it. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge—the People’s League for the Care of German War Graves—was founded in 1919 to search for the bodies of those who perished in World War I. But the search now includes fallen German soldiers from World War II, and as Nicholas Casey writes, these individuals “were not just drivers and cooks but also true mass murderers.” Each year, between 8,000 and 12,000 German war graves are uncovered, with the remains interred in Volksbund grave sites. This includes prominent Nazis such as Julius Dettmann, the SS officer who had Anne Frank arrested. Attending a Volksbund funeral, Casey is left conflicted by its military-style ceremony, complete with a trumpeter and a chaplain. He notes how the grief displayed by the Volksbund attendees seemed “to break with some unspoken prohibition about how to remember these particular combatants.” But this is as far as Casey leans, careful to present different perspectives. What about the wives and children left behind? What about those who died at 19? Very few families are interested in accepting the remains of Nazi ancestors when the Volksbund informs them of a discovery. But does that mean they should not be buried? While the reporting here is meticulous, Casey leaves you to reach your own conclusions. He is adept at navigating the nuances at play, encouraging reflection on how societies confront their darkest chapters. In a shifting world, where some of these chapters are now being read differently, it is a study of consequence. —CW
5. The Last Detail
Kent Russell | Harper’s Magazine | March 21, 2025 | 8,178 words
Of the many self-selecting groups that congregate in New York City, some seem to exist only in collective form. Like chess hustlers. Or Black Israelites. Or, maybe most noticeably, the Guardian Angels: Not once have I spied that red satin jacket and almost-matching beret in the singular. I wasn’t sure if that was my own dumb luck, or if they simply kept the regalia stowed until they met up with their compatriots. Kent Russell’s Harper’s story about the volunteer patrol organization doesn’t explain the phenomenon, but given how enjoyable it is, I doubt you’ll hold it against him. Russell joins the group after living in New York for nearly 20 years, motivated by curiosity but also the sincere desire to contribute. The realization that there was a great essay in it probably didn’t hurt, either. You’re by his side through multiple patrols, each described in the deadpan detail Russell has perfected over the course of books like I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son and In the Land of Good Living: A Journey to the Heart of Florida. I’m predisposed to being annoyed by pieces like this; one person’s fish out of water is another’s white writer on class/culture safari. However, Russell approaches this with care, and while his scenework is often pitched for a laugh, its arm’s-length regard feels like a function of self-consciousness rather than judgment. (Besides, there’s something patently ridiculous about treating the New York of now—a Target on every corner, an influencer filming TikToks on every block—like the New York of the late ’70s.) Look through the group’s bluster and the writer’s self-deprecation, and you’ll see that the two are more similar than they appear. Both love the city they live in. And neither wants to be the only one. —PR
Audience Award
“Something Went Wrong”: The Double Murder That Austin Nearly Forgot
Stephen Harrigan | Texas Monthly | March 28, 2025 | 8,689 words
Stephen Harrigan met John White while a student at the University of Texas. He remembers him well, but Harrigan has “often wondered whether my memory of John White is so vivid because of the power of that first impression—or because only a week or so later he was murdered.” White was brutally killed along with his new girlfriend, Keitha Morris, during a trip to Bull Creek, a shallow stream to the west of Austin. The tragedy shook the community, but the murderer was never able to give a reason for his crime, and people were quick to move on. While Harrigan has no new information to share, as a peer of the couple, he offers a particularly nuanced study of this horrific tragedy. —CW
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/04/04/top-5-longreads-557/
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