The best longform journalism we consumed this week
Welcome to The Long Story, the weekly newsletter where we curate the best longform journalism on the internet. If you want this newsletter landing in your inbox every Friday, click on this handy little button:
Let’s jump into it…
The Strange Allure of Watching Other People Tear Up Their Homes
Why are millions of people obsessed with DIY home renovators on social media? Do they watch it to learn how to renovate their own homes, or is it merely a way to vicariously live out a Millennial fantasy where one works with their hands and can actually afford a house? [NYT]
He Comes From Music Royalty. Can He Save Atlantic Records?
Over the past century, Atlantic Records minted some of the biggest music stars in the world, but it's now operating in an environment where many of the up-and-coming musicians are forging their own paths on social media and streaming. Its new CEO has to grapple with a falling market share and help redefine the role of a record label in the post-Spotify/TikTok age. [WSJ]
Kaitlan Collins Is CNN’s “Joyful Warrior” Covering Trump 2.0
When Kaitlan Collins joined CNN, she was viewed with suspicion from some of her colleagues given her previous role at the Daily Caller, but she's since shown a willingness to be an antagonist to the Trump White House, to the point where Trump regularly snaps at her for her barbed questions. [Vanity Fair]
The Many Ways Scientists Are Turning Birds Into Feathered Field Assistants
Historically, scientists have had a difficult time observing animals in their natural lives, mostly because they move around so much. This is especially true for birds, which can travel hundreds of miles in a matter of days. But new sensor technology is making it easier than ever to monitor every aspect of a wild animal's life, from its movements to its heart rate to its surrounding climate. One scientist claimed this tech is revealing the "living pulse of the planet." [Audubon]
How ‘Minecraft’ Conquered Gaming and Beyond
Why is Minecraft arguably the most successful game in the history of games? It's probably a combination of the infinite storylines and the ability for players to simulate what it feels like to be an actual god. Entire civilizations can be erected by those with the patience and determination to do so. [Rolling Stone]
Jon Hamm Finds His Way Back to the Hilltop
It's pretty amazing that, even at the height of its popularity, Mad Men only had a few million viewers per episode, and yet it indisputably transformed Jon Hamm into an A-list star. After the show's end, he bounced around in various supporting roles, with mixed results. Now, he's poised to reclaim his leading man status with the debut of a new Apple TV show. [NYT]
Shadow Banks Are Too Big to Stay in the Shadows
Shadow banks, which are basically hedge funds that provide many of the same services of traditional banks but without much government oversight, now control over $240 trillion in global assets. With Trump's tariffs threatening the world economy, these funds could end up serving as the linchpin that, when pulled, could send us tumbling into another Great Recession. How big a threat they are really boils down to whether they're overleveraged, which, without the government oversight, is impossible to know. [Bloomberg]
Starlink’s Numbers Could Bring SpaceX’s Valuation Crashing Down
SpaceX's rockets get lots of press, but the global market for sending cargo to space is only about $15 billion total. The company's real profit potential is its Starlink satellites, which deliver internet connectivity to rural regions all around the world. While some investors think the opportunity there is massive — they're currently valuing the company at $350 billion — others point out that the populations that could most use these services are often too poor to afford it. [Forbes]
The horses and mules that moved mountains and hearts
In the most remote parts of the US, pack mules are essential to moving people and supplies across mountainous terrains. Without them, our ability to build and maintain important forest infrastructure is almost impossible. Now, the Trump Administration's vast job cuts to the US Forest Service threaten to eliminate the human workforce that trains and maintains these animals. The longterm impact on the environment could be catastrophic. [High Country News]
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The Senate’s Age of Irrelevance
Senate majority leader John Thune is among the last of the old guard Republicans who hearken back to a time when the Senate still sometimes operated in a bipartisan fashion. He's occasionally called out Trump on his worst behavior, but he's also mostly stood by as Trump bypassed Congress completely to push his authoritarian agenda. Many of his former colleagues hope he'll eventually step in to rescue the Senate from its increasing obsolescence. [New Yorker]
A Lawyer Who Helped the Kushners Crack Down on Poor Tenants Now Helps Renters Fight Big Landlords
For years, if someone wanted to get out of their lease at slumlord Jared Kushner's apartments, they had to face down Andrew Rabinowitz, a lawyer who often easily outmaneuvered them in the courtroom and forced them to continue paying their rent. Then Rabinowitz suddenly switched sides, and now he's able to leverage his vast understanding of landlord-tenant laws to defend people who historically have had no access to legal counsel. “It was like a heavyweight sparring featherweights over and over again,” he said of his time working for the Kushners. “That’s just not satisfying.” [ProPublica]
Google AI Search Shift Leaves Website Makers Feeling ‘Betrayed’
How good will Google's AI be at answering questions once it's killed off many of the very websites it uses to supply those answers? While the company claims that the presence of its generative AI on top of search results hasn't triggered a loss in publisher traffic, independent data from companies like Similarweb shows a significant decrease in Google referrals. Meanwhile, sites that produce AI-generated slop are rushing to fill in the information gaps. [Bloomberg]
‘The Tsunami Is Coming’: China’s Global Exports Are Just Getting Started
For decades, China's economic growth was mainly attributed to its cheap-to-hire labor force, but in recent years it's made huge investments in growing its technological and engineering prowess, to the point now where its robot capabilities are pretty much unmatched. As a result, no other country on earth can keep up with its industrial efficiency, and the gap is only widening. [NYT]
Kippers and Champagne
The Barclay brothers were virtually inseparable as they conquered the post-war UK real estate market and eventually cheered on the rise of Thatcherism. It was only after the passage of Brexit, for which they gave full-throated support, that their relationship deteriorated, devolving into outright corporate espionage as the octogenarians fought for control of their empire. It wasn't until the death of David Barclay in 2021 that it became widely known their businesses were sitting on a mountain of unsustainable debt — a revelation that eventually triggered the forced sale of The Telegraph. The irony, of course, is that Brexit likely hastened their downfall. [LRB]
My Vanity Fair Hazing
With print magazines, stories take months to research, write, and edit, and, as a result of this dynamic, Graydon Carter wasn't fully steering the Vanity Fair ship until he was almost a year on the job. Luckily for him, his boss Si Newhouse had more patience than the average media mogul, with him treating Conde Nast more as a passion project than an actual business. "If he ever wobbled over his decision to hire me, he never showed it." [New York]
The Campus Cold War: Faculty vs. Administrators
College administrators and professors have historically never been the best of friends, but the acrimony between the two has spiked in recent years. "At least 141 faculty bodies voted no confidence in their leaders between 2012 and 2021, up from 50 the decade before." Part of this has to do with the economic interests of universities becoming less and less aligned with the principles of academia. The problem will only get worse as youth enrollment plummets due to a shrinking birthrate. [Chronicle of Higher Ed]
Does the Knot Have a “Fake Brides” Problem?
Americans spend about $70 billion a year on weddings, with much of that money flowing toward a constellation of vendors who make the majority of their revenue from those weddings. For years, wedding vendors have depended on The Knot, a wedding-focused publication that charges them upwards of thousands of dollars a year to be included on its directory. After The Knot's acquisition by a private equity firm, however, vendors started getting flooded with thousands of fake leads in what they say was an effort to keep them buying more ads on the site. [New Yorker]
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