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Long before the 1947 Roswell incident brought “little green men” into the public consciousness and prompted an explosion in UFO sightings, writers and scientists have speculated about the existence of life beyond our planet. H. G. Wells laid the groundwork for modern science fiction with novels like The War of the Worlds (1898), one of the first books to imagine an extraterrestrial invasion. Before Wells, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) sparked the imagination by discovering “canals” on Mars. But for the first recorded instance of humanity pondering the possibility of alien life, we have to go all the way back to ancient Greek and Roman times. In the first century B.C., Roman poet Lucretius wrote, “Nothing in the universe is unique and alone and therefore in other regions there must be other earths inhabited by different tribes of men and breeds of beast.” Not exactly a controversial supposition; still, whether or not such tribes have come to our planet remains impossible to prove, and those who claim to have encountered alien beings have long been dismissed.

That said, in recent years, the concept of otherworldly visitors has begun to shift toward the mainstream. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the latest governmental entity devoted to investigating unexplained sightings. Even the term of choice, “UFO,” has given way to “UAP”—unidentified aerial (or anomalous) phenomenon. And just this June, former U.S. Air Force officer and intelligence official David Grusch claimed that the U.S. government had retrieved remains of several aircraft of “non-human” origin. The fallout from Grusch’s claims is yet to be determined—as is their veracity—but it seems likely that, in the end, the world will settle back into the binary of believers and skeptics, with no concrete evidence to settle the debate. Regardless of which camp you fall into, some of us will always look skyward with hope; we may never be able to scour the entirety of the universe, but it’s hard not to thrill to Lucretius’ logic. In the meantime, the longform articles collected here offer a fascinating glimpse into the UFO community and the stories that have shaped our modern understanding of the topic.

I Want To Believe (Brad Badelt, Maisonneuve, July 2021)

For me, what makes alleged alien encounter testimony so compelling is that—regardless of whether I believe the person’s interpretation of events—the incident had an undeniable and profound effect on their lives. This may not be true in every case, but even if you write off many accounts as delusion or whimsy or simply fiction, you’re still left with a legion of people who have been dramatically changed by their perceived experiences. It’s comforting to know, then, that for those such as Jason Guillemette, a character in this piece about amateur ufologists, communities exist where one can share their experiences without judgment.

In Guillemette’s case, that community is the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a non-profit, volunteer-run organization active in more than 40 countries—and one whose members are as rigidly skeptical as Guillemette. For most MUFON alumni, this is a quest for truth, not validation; members work rigorously to find earthly explanations for reported sightings. And as Badelt widens his scope to other folks in other organizations, you can’t help but be moved by people’s stories. After all, if you were to have a life-changing close encounter, with whom would you share that knowledge?

Most of the time, he’s able to find an explanation, he says. He often sends videos to other volunteers at MUFON who specialize in analyzing computer images. He refers to websites that track the flight patterns of satellites and planes and the International Space Station—the usual suspects when it comes to UFO sightings, he says. Guillemette described a recent case in which a couple reported seeing strange lights hovering above a nearby lake. The lights circled above the lake and then dropped down into the water, only to rise up a moment later and zip away. It turned out to be a plane, he says—filling up with water to fight a nearby forest fire. “Not everybody likes what we come up with,” he says, “but sometimes it’s really evident.”

Crowded Skies (Vaughan Yarwood, New Zealand Geographic, April 1997)

The history of UFO sightings in New Zealand dates back to the early 20^th century. It seems such a tranquil and unassuming country—cinematic hobbit history notwithstanding—which perhaps makes the events recounted here even more unsettling. These are all-too-human tales of altered lives. Some cases, such as that of Iris Catt, a self-proclaimed alien abductee whose nightmarish encounters go back to her childhood, are heartbreakingly tragic. Others follow more positive narratives, believing that aliens are beaming down rays of positivity and openness, gradually bringing humanity to a point where it is ready for formal communication.

When I was at university in the 1990s, “regression therapy”  became big news, with countless stories of trauma-blocked memories and past-life remembrances unearthed through hypnosis. Just as suddenly, regression therapy drowned in a flood of peer-reviewed criticism, relegated to yet another pseudoscience. The concept never went away entirely and it pops up again in Vaughan Yarwood’s story, cautiously approved by academic institutions for its utility in specific circumstances. It’s complex territory, but Yarwood navigates it with clarity and sensitivity.

Iris Catt, a mild-mannered, unprepossessing woman in her 40s, then introduces herself. She is an abductee. It appears certain aliens have had their eye on her from an early age. She recounts her night horrors calmly, the way people do who have learned to accept their scars, to make their hurt and anguish a part of themselves.

“It is happening every day, and it is happening in New Zealand,” says Iris. “It is not going to go away. I truly believe that more and more people are beginning to remember what is happening to them because the time is getting closer when we are going to have to recognise that we are not the only intelligent form of life in the universe.”

Her audience understands. She is among friends.

Alien Nation (Ralph Blumenthal, Vanity Fair, May 2013)

Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John Edward Mack spent many years engaging with people who claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials, in the process becoming a pioneer in his field. Not surprisingly, he attracted resistance from the scientific community—less because of his work than because, over time, he came to the startling and highly controversial conclusion that a number of alleged abductees were telling the truth. Mack’s research may be little remembered by his profession at large, but his warmth, humanity, and faith continue to inspire hope in a small community that gathers annually in Rhode Island. They prefer the term “experiencer” to “abductee,” and in this Vanity Fair feature Ralph Blumenthal interweaves their stories with Mack’s.

Once again, for me, the fascination of this piece lies in the stories of these everyday folks. To some degree, it doesn’t matter what they actually experienced. What counts, as Mack understood, is they have experienced something, and that something left a profound mark on their lives. In seeking to apply rigor and structure to the stories he was collecting, Mack plowed a hard path with poise and compassion. As this piece eloquently shows, his work was not in vain.

“Nothing in my nearly 40 years of familiarity with psychiatry prepared me,” Mack later wrote in his 1994 best-seller, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. He had always assumed that anyone claiming to have been abducted by aliens was crazy, along with those who took them seriously. But here were people—students, homemakers, secretaries, writers, businesspeople, computer technicians, musicians, psychologists, a prison guard, an acupuncturist, a social worker, a gas-station attendant—reporting experiences that Mack could not begin to fathom, things, he reflected, that by all notions of reality “simply could not be.”

One Man’s Quest to Investigate the Mysterious “Wow!” Signal (Keith Cooper, Supercluster, August 2022)

I have long been fascinated with the so-called Wow signal, received in 1977 by Ohio University’s Big Ear radio telescope, which was then being used to search for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The tale of the signal makes for a great story in itself, but Keith Cooper’s piece sees that as merely a starting point. His narrative finds a central character in a man named Robert Gray: While the scientific community, including SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), gradually lowered the Wow signal to the status of “interesting curio,” Gray remained convinced that there was more to uncover.

Gray’s tenacity and belief in the face of mounting opposition is remarkable. Struggling for funding, unsuccessfully attempting to enlist help, and bartering for much-needed time on a limited number of radio telescopes, the frustrations he must have experienced make the twists in his story all the more poignant. Just when his enthusiasm began to wane, his work seemingly at a dead end, an exoplanet scientist reached out to Gray with a fresh idea, breathing new life into the man’s relentless quest. There is no neat, satisfying definitive end to this tale, but perhaps therein lies the true glory of Gray’s work. In the face of uncertainty, he carried on until the very end.

Nobody knows what the Wow signal was. We do know that it was not a regular astrophysical object, such as a galaxy or a pulsar. Curious the frequency that it was detected at, 1,420 MHz, is the frequency emitted by neutral hydrogen atoms in space, but it is also the frequency that scientists hunting for alien life listen to. Their reasoning is that aliens will supposedly know that astronomers will already be listening to that frequency in their studies of galactic hydrogen and so should easily detect their signal – or so the theory goes. Yet there was no message attached to the signal. It was just a burst of raw radio energy.

If SETI had a mythology, then the Wow signal would be its number one myth. And while it has never been forgotten by the public, the academic side of SETI has, by and large, dismissed it, quite possibly because it hasn’t been seen to repeat, and therefore cannot be verified—the golden rule of a successful SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) detection.

How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator and the Singer from Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream (Bryan Bender, Politico, May 2021)

Celebrities who have copped to believing in UFOs are numerous enough to populate a listicle. Politicians? Not so much. Yet, the U.S. Congress’ House Oversight Committee has announced plans for a hearing regarding UAP reports, and if you trace the conversation  back a few years, you’ll find that this shift is at least partly thanks to the protagonists in this story: former U.S. senator Harry Reid and Tom DeLonge, a founding member of pop-punk band Blink 182.

There’s a lot to digest here. It’s a wonderful example of hidden history: a small group of like-minded individuals working behind the scenes to advance their cause, with potentially wide-ranging repercussions. That history would be far less engaging, however, were it not for Tom DeLonge’s gregarious personality and indefatigable belief in alien visitors. His company, To The Stars, devotes considerable time and money to researching UAPs and extraterrestrial matters in general; Bryan Bender’s feature tells the story of how the singer managed to recruit experts and politicians to his cause.

Hanging on DeLonge’s wall was what might be considered the medals he’s collected in his struggle: a display case filled with dozens of commemorative coins from his meetings with generals, aerospace contractors and secret government agencies. They trace his visits to the CIA, to the U.S. Navy, to the “advanced development programs” division at Lockheed Martin’s famously secretive “Skunk Works” in Southern California, where some of the world’s most advanced spy planes were designed.

Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, U.K. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.

Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Krista Stevens

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.

The past few years have drastically changed how we think about our relationship to work, perhaps permanently. However, they haven’t changed the fact that billions of people on this planet spend about half their waking hours exchanging labor for money in order to secure food and shelter. As such, work has remained an inescapable part of one’s identity. “What do you do?” is still a small-talk question not because the answer is usually interesting, but because the answer tells you something about the skills and knowledge that person has amassed. And when the answer is interesting, it’s hard not to feel some measure of admiration for someone whose experience falls so outside your own.

I’ve always been fascinated by those whose daily occupations carry meaning, promise adventure, or are in any way out of the ordinary. Of course, everybody’s dream job is different, but imagine swapping sitting at a computer or working on a production line for clearing landmines, dodging tornadoes, or braving the icy waters of the Bering Sea. Not for everyone, of course—but what astonishing ways to earn a living. 

The examples you’ll encounter below range from the inspirational to the unfathomable. Who would want to toil 18-hour days, or climb to dizzying heights with little to no protection? For some, that sort of life holds a deep appeal, and herein lies the hook that draws you into these stories: In attempting to understand the motivations of others, we are by reflex attempting to understand ourselves. Each of these pieces moved me in some way, and I hope that they move you also.

Chasing Tornadoes (Priit J. Vesilind, National Geographic, April 2004)

As this mesmerizing article points out, it was the 1996 film Twister that first brought the occupation of “tornado chaser” to widespread public attention. Twister was a big deal upon its release, and I can vividly recall being spellbound by the then-cutting-edge special effects: dark and furious tendrils reaching down from the sky to pluck people, cars, and houses into the sky, spinning like toys, seemingly cut adrift from gravity itself. That film, as all movies do, exaggerated the hazards faced by its protagonists—but, judging by this primary account, not by very much. That meteorologists are still throwing themselves at deadly storms nearly 30 years on tells much of the complexity behind this destructive and spectacular weather phenomenon. 

In order to study tornados, you have to get close enough to manually drop heavy probes in their path, sometimes less than 100 meters from an approaching maelstrom. In a way, it’s comforting to know that, for all our technology and sophistication, we are in no way removed from the natural systems that surround us. Nature can always outdo us, will always win. That’s not to minimize the human cost, however, nor the bravery and determination of the tornado chasers. From the very beginning, in which an entire village is sucked into the air, this piece delivers mind-boggling drama, immersing us in a disparate group of specialists who race across the United States to seek out something most others would sooner avoid—all in the interest of furthering our understanding of an uncontrollable phenomenon.

But we’re late, and out of position. If we try to drive around the storm, we won’t have enough daylight left to see it. So we decide to “punch the core” of the thunderstorm, forcing our way into the “bear’s cage,” an area between the main updraft and the hail. It’s an apt name: Chasing tornadoes is like hunting grizzlies—you want to get close, but not on the same side of the river. Sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you.

And so we head straight into the storm and find ourselves splattering mud at 60 miles an hour (97 kilometers an hour) on a two-lane road, threatening to hydroplane, visibility near zero. Anton is less than comforting. “The hail in the bear’s cage smashes windows and car tops,” he shouts, grinning. “The smaller stuff is kept aloft by the updraft, and only the large chunks fall. It’s like small meteorites banging down. Ha-ha-ha!”

In The Race For Better Cell Service, Men Who Climb Towers Pay With Their Lives (Ryan Knutson and Liz Day, ProPublica, May 2012)

Once again, we encounter a piece that draws aside the invisible curtain to glimpse the grueling efforts that enable our everyday creature comforts—in this case, the world of mobile communications networks. If you’ve ever shuddered at a TikTok video of a worker balanced precariously atop a tower at vertigo-inducing heights, this article probably isn’t for you. Yet, for such a dangerous job—cell tower climbing routinely claims up to 10 times the number of human lives as the conventional construction industry—it pays a relatively modest wage. What is it, then, that drives people to take up such work?

As a project manager quoted in the piece says, “You’ve got to have a problem to hang 150 feet in the air on an eight-inch strap.” Yet the workers featured in this piece, despite some suffering horrible injuries, clearly love their jobs. It’s not hard to understand the buzz that must come from routinely doing something that most people could not (and would not) do, along with sense of freedom that must come with climbing aloft to look down upon the world. As with the cobalt mining industry—itself the subject of another story in this list—there is a dark underside to this business, as sub-contractors routinely cut corners and take risks in the quest for a few extra dollars.

The greatness in Knutson and Day’s article, as with others collected here, lies in its ability to bring to life the stories and personalities of the people whose hard work makes life easier for us all. If you’re reading this on your smartphone, take a moment to consider the often-obscured reality behind mobile technology—a technology that, by its very nature, is largely invisible.

The surge of cell work forever altered tower climbing, an obscure field of no more than 10,000 workers. It attracted newcomers, including outfits known within the business as “two guys and a rope.” It also exacerbated the industry’s transient, high-flying culture.

Climbers live out of motel rooms, installing antennas in Oklahoma one day, building a tower in Tennessee the next. The work attracts risk-takers and rebels. Of the 33 tower fatalities for which autopsy records were available, 10 showed climbers had drugs or alcohol in their systems.

The Cobalt Pipeline (Todd C. Frankel, The Washington Post, September 2016)

This is where mobile technology begins: the dangerous and dirty business of mining for cobalt, a mineral essential to the construction of smartphones and laptops. As a species we are finally becoming aware that every modern amenity carries an ecological price, and that price is often paid most dearly (and ironically) by nations that are monetarily poor but resource-rich. In our relentless drive “forward,” it is often the most vulnerable who pay the price. Mining is not a calling for these men; it is a necessity.

However, there is hope to be found in this troubling story—specifically, the very fact of its existence. The best journalism reduces global issues to a human scale, and by taking us into the lives of Congolese miners risking life and limb in pursuit of the rare metal, writer Todd C. Frankel forces us to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions.  

But Mayamba, 35, knew nothing about his role in this sprawling global supply chain. He grabbed his metal shovel and broken-headed hammer from a corner of the room he shares with his wife and child. He pulled on a dust-stained jacket. A proud man, he likes to wear a button-down shirt even to mine. And he planned to mine by hand all day and through the night. He would nap in the underground tunnels. No industrial tools. Not even a hard hat. The risk of a cave-in is constant.

“Do you have enough money to buy flour today?” he asked his wife.

She did. But now a debt collector stood at the door. The family owed money for salt. Flour would have to wait.

Mayamba tried to reassure his wife. He said goodbye to his son. Then he slung his shovel over his shoulder. It was time.

Making Our Home Safe Again: Meet the Women Who Clear Land Mines (Jessie Williams, The Observer, January 2021)

War leaves scars on every country it touches, sometimes literally: one of its most insidious instruments is buried explosives, set to trigger at the touch of a human foot. Land mines have been a topic of discussion for many years, catapulted to the front of the news in 1997, when Princess Diana raised awareness by walking through a field of live explosives in Angola. (She was a guest of the Halo Trust, an organization that undertakes the arduous and dangerous task of clearing such places for the local populace.)

Little can be more terrifying than the knowledge that each step you take could be your last. It’s a sudden, senseless, death, one without discernment or mercy. But in this inspiring story, life comes full circle, as Hana Khider returns to her ancestral homeland of the Sinjar mountains in northwestern Iraq. When Khider was a child, her mother told her stories of the family homeland they were forced to flee; now, as an adult, she works as part of a team of deminers, making that homeland safe once again. As meaningful as this work is, it also carries with it the deadliest of dangers: an average of nine people a day still fall victim to these terrible remnants of conflict.

At the start of this month, a 24-year-old man working for MAG was killed in an explosion at a munitions storage facility in Iraq’s Telefar district – a reminder of the dangers these deminers face every single day. Iraq has around 1,800 sq km of contaminated land (an area bigger than Greater London) stemming from multiple conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Gulf War, the 2003 US-led invasion, and the Isis occupation of 2014. The Iraqi government has a target deadline of February 2028 to clear the country, which Morgan thinks is optimistic. “Last year, operators cleared just over 15 sq km,” he says. Covid-19 hasn’t helped. This year MAG has managed to disarm 1,200 mines; usually it would be 6,750 mines.

Dispatches: Life on an Alaskan Crab Boat (Andy Cochrane, Men’s Journal, April 2021)

We have always projected a certain romance onto the idea of working on the high seas, and a dignity upon those individuals brave enough to do so. For this piece, journalist Andy Cochrane signs up for a week’s work on the fishing boat Silver Spray, one of just 60 such vessels responsible for supplying all of North America with snow crab. Facing long hours, rough water, and freezing conditions, the work is as grueling as could be imagined, but surprisingly Cochrane encounters only good humor, pragmatism, and an inspiring sense of brotherhood amongst the crew.

This is work that is as fundamental to human existence as can be found. People have to eat, after all. But what really strikes me about this piece—and is a sentiment echoed by its author—is the remarkable positivity of the fishermen, which surely can’t be put down to a sense of pride and decent wages alone. Perhaps it’s the extreme conditions and the hardships that help foster such a sense of togetherness and wry determination. Whatever the cause, this is another absorbing peek into a job few of us would wish to undertake.

I was curious how these guys found their way to the industry and how they hadn’t burned out. Attrition is incredibly high, for obvious reasons—freezing temperatures, rough seas and long, exhausting hours. All three laughed off my greenhorn question, and we returned to tips on how I would survive the week.

Jose, an immigrant from El Salvador and father of two, has lived in Anchorage since the ’90s. Quiet, always smiling, and always working, he’s fished his entire career. Leo, raised in Samoa and now living in Vegas, also has two kids. Even with frozen fingers and toes, he never stopped making jokes. Jeffery, who lives half the year in the Philippines with his wife and three kids, would often give me a fist bump and say “you’ll be all right, everyone goes through this” after I puked, which happened 11 more times the first day.

Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, U.K. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.

Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Carolyn Wells

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.

In 2012, Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner stepped from a tiny platform into empty air, 24 miles above the ground, an audience of 10 million people watching live via social media. Video of his ensuing jump, during which he became the first human to break the sound barrier before parachuting safely to earth, has been viewed hundreds of millions of times. It’s little wonder: The record-setting feat epitomizes the allure of that ever-growing category known as extreme sports. Athletic talent is one thing; exercising it at the very fringes of human capacity is quite another.

Every kid who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s remembers Evel Knievel in his star-spangled jumpsuit, thrilling us all with death-defying (and bone-crushing) stunts — but hundreds of years before Knievel revved up his motorbike, Hawaiian divers were leaping feet-first from massive crags in lele kawa, or cliff diving. Further back still, the medieval sport of jousting frequently resulted in injury or death despite its many safety-minded rules; in ancient Greece, athletes fought in the deadly mixed-martial-arts of pankration, a combat in which biting and gouging were the only two methods you couldn’t use to disable your opponent. From Minoan bull-leaping to the Algonquin ball game of pasuckuakohowog, in which hundreds of competitors risked life and limb on the same field, humans have long engaged in (and watched) the riskiest contests imaginable. 

In modern times, the appeal of extreme sports can be attributed to twin factors: social media allowing for easy transmission of eye-catching escapades to a global audience, and new technology making even the most challenging of pursuits considerably safer. Bungee jumping, for example, has its origins in the 1980s, when New Zealander Henry van Asch and a fellow Kiwi friend came up with the novel idea of hurling yourself off a bridge attached to an elastic rope. Back then, such an endeavor appealed to a small group of adrenaline-chasers willing to risk their lives for the thrill. Nowadays, bungee jumping is statistically as safe as skydiving and is widely viewed as a relatively low-risk activity for any pleasure seeker.  

Not everything is purely a matter of proper safety measures. Ultra-endurance races, combat sports, and other activities earn their “extreme” moniker through the sheer danger that can befall an untrained attempt. Yet, the popularity of extreme sports continues to rise. Whether that’s a reaction to COVID-induced inactivity, a rebellion against the mundanity of desk jobs, or something else entirely can’t be answered, but these articles go some way toward exploring what leads us as a species to seek out our own physical and mental limits.

More Like a Suicide Than a Sport (Ed Caesar, The New York Times Magazine, July 2013)

Hurling yourself from tall places is a high-risk, high-reward pursuit — physically, if not financially. BASE jumping differs from parachuting in that it involves launching not from an airplane, but from a static object. (BASE stands for the four officially sanctioned objects: Buildings, Antennae, Spans, and Earth itself.) Unlike the other activities on this list, it’s a sport with a decidedly illicit frisson. While there are official competitions held around the world and numerous places you can go to learn from the experts, BASE jumping still often hinges on illegal entry into skyscrapers or building sites. In 2009, Hervé le Gallou, the subject of this piece, employed subterfuge to enter the Burj Khalifa, then under construction, and threw himself from the 155th floor.

Dreams of flying date back to Greek mythology’s story of Icarus, and surely much further. Many BASE jumpers, particularly those who employ wingsuits designed to enable the wearer to glide for long distances, seem blind to that particular cautionary tale, with one in every 500 flights ending in death. We’ll never know exactly what went wrong with le Gallou’s flight that made him a numerator in that grim statistic. It’s a poignant tale, particularly when taking account of le Gallou’s former girlfriend’s desperate search for answers. Once more, we find ourselves cycling back to the question of why reasonable people do this.

Raoul jumped first, and then Woerth. Having completed their flights, they waited in the valley for the others. Le Gallou jumped third. His flight started well, according to Brennan and Frat. He banked high over the rocky outcrop and then dropped out of sight. The two Americans jumped fourth and fifth. When they landed in the valley, after flights of more than a minute, they asked about Le Gallou. Neither Raoul nor Woerth had seen him.

In Deep: The Dark and Dangerous World of Extreme Cavers (Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker, April 2014)

Of all the extreme sports, it’s caving, or spelunking (derived from the Greek word “spelaion,” or “cave”), that I find hardest to understand. To turn your back on the sun and worm your way into ever colder and darker places seems like a deliberate act of self-destruction. Squeezing through narrow rock fissures, wriggling on their bellies like a snake along passages less than a foot high: With every inch, cave divers propel themselves farther from safety. Part of the thrill surely comes from the danger. Many a caver has died from flash floods, or worse, wedged into an unseen drop or kink, their bodies never to be recovered. In such cases, the cave in question is transformed into a somber memorial — at least until the boards erected to prevent more tragedy are torn down by the next wave of fearless explorers.

This piece offers a gripping account of Polish caver Marcin Gala’s epic journey into the previously unmapped Chevé cave system, in which the author asserts that such places represent the last unknown earthbound areas left to humankind. Clearly, however, something else is at play. For tens of thousands of years, humans have been drawn to the depths. They came in search of refuge from predators and the elements, but clearly recognized these as sacred places, leaving behind markings of fierce beauty. Reading this article stirs something primal in the soul.

The truth is they had nowhere better to go. All the pleasant places had already been found. The sunlit glades and secluded coves, phosphorescent lagoons and susurrating groves had been mapped and surveyed, extolled in guidebooks and posted with Latin names. To find something truly new on the planet, something no human had ever seen, you had to go deep underground or underwater. They were doing both.

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How Becky Lynch Became ‘The Man’ (Molly Langmuir, Elle, April 2021)

To some, it’s a bizarre carnival show, a theater of the absurd, the appeal of which is hard to fathom. For millions of fans worldwide, though, WWE is the epitome of popular entertainment — a never-ending, real-life soap opera full of bombastic bravado and comic-book violence. WWE is fast, loud, brutal, and fake. The outcomes of fights are predetermined, but the fights themselves are semi-improvised, and require a level of strength, technical ability, and agility that you can’t help but appreciate. Accidents and injuries are far from uncommon, and the fitness and resilience needed are high. If the male side of pantomime wrestling is contentious, the world of women’s WWE is even more so. It’s an arena in which Irish superstar Becky Lynch, known by her moniker, “The Man,” has battled her way to the top.

Women’s WWE has a less-than-glorious past, with female fighters often relegated to a titillating sideshow, pressured to wear skimpy outfits and even perform simulated sex acts in pursuit of a pink butterfly belt. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising when you consider that the sport has historically been overseen by men, for men, with the majority of fans falling into the working-class, white male, category. Fighters like Lynch have fought hard to overcome this, and the landscape is changing, even if male viewers still make up two-thirds of the audience. These days, the WWE takes women’s wrestling much more seriously and appreciates its growing female fan base. This exciting peek into the world of female WWE makes for an illuminating read.

It was 3:30 a.m. by the time she made it back to the Brooklyn Marriott. Rollins had a bottle of her favorite tequila, Don Julio 1942, at the ready, and she had a drink. Some people thought the match’s ending hadn’t been sufficiently cathartic, but Lynch had done what she came to do. Twenty-one minutes into a fight that left Flair crumpled on the ground and Rousey’s legs covered in bruises, Lynch brought Rousey into a quick roll-up and the bell rang. A moment later, she hoisted the belts she’d won overhead, teary-eyed.

Secrets of the World’s Greatest Freediver (Daniel Riley, GQ, September 2021)

My first exposure to the world of freediving came, as I suspect is true for many others, through The Big Blue, French director Luc Besson’s 1988 film. It’s a beautiful, if eccentric, tale of fierce rivals whose chosen sport is deceptively simple: to see who can dive the deepest on a single breath, then return to the surface without, as the author of this piece memorably puts it, “passing out or dying.” Besson’s movie took inspiration from two legendary figures of the sport, Jacques Mayol and Enzo Maiorca, both of whom retired from competition in good health. In fact, surprisingly, modern freediving is far less dangerous than cycling or running. Diving unaided down to depths of over 100 meters, however, is anything but safe and easy.

The thrilling piece presented here centers on 34-year-old Russian freediver Alexey Molchanov, a superman of the sport, whose holistic approach to diving makes for fascinating reading. Present here, too, is a tragedy more heartbreaking and incredible than any found in the movies. In 2015, Alexey’s mother, Natalia, herself a freediving pioneer and record holder, disappeared on her final dive — a demonstration to students — off the coast of Ibiza. Her body has never been recovered. Alexey, who was trained by his mother, continues to freedive competitively. For him, as was the case with Natalia, the act is far more than a simple sport; it is an exercise in meditation and a powerful tool for self-examination.

Once Alexey emerges, he has 15 seconds to meet the surface protocol. He must show the judges that he is okay (by flashing an okay sign). He must keep his airways above the water. He must flash the tag he grabbed at depth. And he must not pass out. He can cough up blood from a torn lung. He can produce pink foam or his lips can turn blue. But if he meets protocol, the dive is good.

Inside the Pain Cave (Mirin Fader, The Ringer, August 2022)

For most of us, and even for elite athletes, running a marathon seems like a daunting prospect. Not for Courtney Dauwalter. Wearing baggy basketball shorts, Dauwalter regularly tackles ultramarathons — courses four or even eight times the standard 26.2-mile distance. She seems happy and bubbly, but inaction makes her antsy, even if just for a day or two. Maybe this hints at the obsessive side of extreme sports, an adrenaline addiction that demands feeding. Inarguably, for Dauwalter, extreme running is an activity inseparable from her sense of self.

Her achievements are incredible. At 37, she’s won nearly everything there is to win, setting records in the process, and has competed all over the world. Most impressive, though, is the mental strength Dauwalter displays. This is a woman who doesn’t just crave challenges — she requires them. Reading this article provides a tantalizing glimpse into her psyche, and it’s not hard to understand the satisfaction, even tranquillity, that arises for her during and after a race. For Dauwalter, the “pain cave” is a hypnotic, familiar, and even reassuring world. It may be a place few of us would desire to visit, but it bears out the new spin on an old adage: There’s value in taking yourself out of your comfort zone.

Sometimes, to ensure that her brain is still working, she recites mantras or tells herself jokes or thinks of song lyrics, or dreams of the brownie toppings she’ll have on her ice cream — after she finishes her nachos — once the race is over. If she has been racing for more than a day, she occasionally forces herself to take a one-minute power nap off to the side of a trail. Sometimes, though, she is so amped she can’t power down, so she powers forward, even if that means, as unfathomable as it seems, nodding off while jogging.

Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, U.K. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.

Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Carolyn Wells

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.

“They’re a little eccentric” is a phrase I suspect most of us have heard used to describe a certain kind of memorable person. For me, it evokes my childhood dentist — an elderly man who favored colorful bow ties and humming loudly as he worked, and who once wagged his finger in my face and gravely advised, “never marry a woman who makes you chop wood.” I still don’t quite know what he was getting at.

But what do we really mean when we call someone eccentric? The word renders a verdict of harmlessness: A person’s style, conduct, or mannerisms may be memorable, but not concerning. And truthfully, we need people who are a bit of a character (to use an equally common euphemism). Their difference reinforces our sense of stability, their peculiarity a necessary splash of color in a landscape of conformity. We love to hear about them, to speculate why they are as they are — the odder, the better. Whether in documentaries like Grey Gardens or the five stories collected here, well-reported tales of quirkiness always invoke a small thrill, vaulting their subjects out of the realm of local gossip and into a wider imagination.

However, it’s no accident that every entry here concerns individuals who are, to varying degrees, rich or famous. The sad truth is that the lives of the everyday working class are seldom celebrated, and least of all those whose habits and personalities fall outside of the bounds of “normal.” To quote a character in Ellen Raskin’s novel The Westing Game, “the poor are crazy, the rich just eccentric.” Wealth affords many privileges in life, among them the indulgence of oddity, and such indulgence is only magnified in the face of celebrity. Behavior that would be considered problematic becomes acceptable, even admired as a natural by-product of genius. (See: Andy Kaufman; Bjork; and, at least up to a certain point, Kanye West). 

Whatever your take on the meaning of “eccentric,” these stories — sad, inspiring, tragic, and incredible as they are — provide a fascinating glimpse into the minds of those whose lives are anything but conventional.

The Day Bobby Blew It (Brad Darrach, Playboy, July 1973)

Every sport has its enigmatic geniuses, players of supreme natural talent whose volatile nature as often as not trips them up. Remarkably often, a pattern repeats: The young upstart appears as if they had ridden down on a lightning bolt, shakes up the landscape and transcends the limits of the sport, yet somehow never quite reaches the heights they could have, and should have, achieved. In boxing, “Prince” Naseem Hamed shot to fame on the back of extraordinary talent mixed with equally extraordinary theatrics, only to fall frustratingly short of all-time greatness, abruptly walking away from a sport he no longer loved. In soccer, mercurial French footballer-cum-poet Eric Cantona, an eccentric genius if ever there was one, lost the captaincy of his national team thanks to a bizarre display of temper. Basketball, of course, has Dennis Rodman, a player who eternally walked a tightrope between outrageous skill and self-implosion. Pick any sport you like and there will always be numerous examples; in chess, however, Bobby Fischer stands alone.

The World Chess Championships of 1972 were memorable for several reasons. Russia had dominated the competition for 24 years prior, and no American had won since the 19th century. The world was in the middle of a Cold War. The man who held the crown, 25-year-old Russian Boris Spassky, had learned how to play on a train while escaping Leningrad during World War II. Yet, Spassky’s opponent might have been the most memorable element. Bobby Fischer was the definition of a prodigy: At 14, he had won the U.S. Championship with the only recorded perfect score in the history of the tournament. Fifteen years later, he carried the hopes of a nation upon his shoulders. But which Bobby Fischer would turn up — the confident, happy young man, or the paranoid, furious recluse? Would he, in fact, turn up at all? Chess aficionados will already know this story, but Darrach writes with such insight and elegance, transporting us to a world of fantastic intrigue and unbelievable pressure, that even if you know the outcome, this article is a thrill from start to finish.

I was 2600 miles northeast of the Yale Club when the crisis broke. I was in Reykjavik, Iceland, waiting for Bobby to fly up for the match. Spassky was waiting, too—he had arrived eight days before—and so were 140–150 newspaper, magazine and television reporters from at least 32 countries. They were getting damn tired of waiting, in fact, and the stories out of Reykjavik were reflecting their irritation.

Frank Sidebottom: The Man Behind the Mask (Jon Ronson, The Guardian, January 2014)

Those of us who grew up in England during the ’80s and ’90s will surely remember Frank Sidebottom, a bizarre character who appeared seemingly out of nowhere, lighting up various children’s TV shows and briefly enjoying his own series before disappearing back to the strange realm from which he had emerged. What made Sidebottom so singular was the fact that he wasn’t human. Rather, he was human, but his head wasn’t: Atop his shoulders sat an inflatable plastic oval, which Sidebottom never removed.

At the heart of this fantastical story, here recounted by firsthand witness Jon Ronson, lies an astonishing quote from George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” What begins as a tale about an eccentric, imaginative musician soon becomes one of identity, acceptance, and the blurring of the line between fiction and reality.

I never understood why Chris sometimes kept Frank’s head on for hours, even when it was only us in the van. Under the head Chris would wear a swimmer’s nose clip. Chris would be Frank for such long periods the clip had deformed him slightly, flattened his nose out of shape. When he’d remove the peg after a long stint I’d see him wince in pain.

John McAfee: The Prophet of Paranoia (Stephen Rodrick, Men’s Journal, September 2015)

The tech zillionaire class is a modern phenomenon that tends to divide opinion. Depending on which side you listen to, the likes of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are either visionary gurus transforming our society into a better, more desirable model, or childlike narcissists who treat the world and everything in it as disposable playthings. As ever, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. The late John McAfee, who made a fortune from virus-protection software at a time when most had never even heard of the term, came to prominence in an era before the Tony Stark model of entrepreneur-as-hero entered the public imagination.

Again, we come to a crossroads. Was John McAfee a delusional paranoid or a tech-security messiah, hounded by government operatives and mysterious cartels desperate to protect their shadowy interests? Undeniably, he’s a fascinating figure, and the tales of guns, SWAT teams, wild flights, and deaths as recounted to journalist Stephen Rodrick are compelling, even as his readily apparent narcissism and deeply problematic trappings (such as his self-described “teenage harem”) are highly disturbing.

At dawn, we land in Atlanta, and the six-hour drive to Lexington passes in a haze. The Blazer fills up with cigarette smoke as Pool and McAfee check their arsenal: a Smith & Wesson .40, a .380 Ruger, and another three or four handguns in the front seat. “I like to have a small one in my waistband,” says McAfee. “Sitting on the toilet is a real vulnerable position.”

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Josephine Baker’s Rainbow Tribe (Von Merlind Theile, Der Spiegel, October 2009)

Singer and dancer Josephine Baker would have been just as big a star, if not bigger, in the modern age of social media. Her talent, unconventionality, lifestyle, and beauty brought her fame and fortune at a time when few Black women could even dream of such a thing. She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, became a celebrated performer at the Folies Bergère in Paris, received a medal for her work assisting the French Resistance during World War II, and was rewarded by the NAACP for her activism.

Baker was also temperamental, unhappy, and the instigator of a bizarre and unethical plan to combat racism that almost defies belief. In this absorbing piece, we learn of a side to Baker’s character that is little known to many. It is, if we needed one, a sharp reminder that celebrities are just as flawed as the rest of us, that good intentions don’t always lead to good results, and that a life led with all limits removed rarely, if ever, turns out well.

In photos taken at the time, the chateau looks more like an orphanage than a real home. The children slept in a room in the attic, in eight small beds lined up in a row. Whenever Baker returned home, even if it happened to be at 3 a.m., she would wake the children and demand affection.

When I Was Young and Uneasy (Edith Sitwell, The Atlantic, March 1965)

I suspect all parents find tales of unhappy childhoods difficult, even disturbing, to read. We want nothing but the best for our offspring, especially if we have not enjoyed a peaceful and stable upbringing ourselves. The saving grace of this piece is the beautiful prose with which poet Edith Sitwell recalls her formative years growing up in a famously eccentric and almost casually cruel household. The various characters and events as described by Sitwell resemble appalling fictions, their grotesquerie landing somewhere between Charles Dickens and H. P. Lovecraft.

During her adult life, Sitwell was divisive, controversial, flamboyant, gracious, and scornful. She possessed a heart capable of absorbing and displaying the most delicate beauty, hardened perhaps, by her upbringing in a family so well off that it was able to wallow in a pit of morbid peculiarity. Her poetry is wonderous; her literary analysis revelatory. Many thousands of words have been written concerning Edith and the Sitwells, but almost certainly none as moving and striking as those you will discover here, written by her own hand.

I remember little of Mr. Stout’s outward appearance, excepting that he looked like a statuette constructed of margarine, then frozen so stiff that no warmth, either from the outer world or human feeling, could begin to melt it. The statuette was then swaddled in padded wool, to give an impression of burliness.

‘The Whole Place Is so Full of Mysterious Questions’ (John Reppion and Joshi Herrmann, The Liverpool Post, February 2021)

Sometime in the 1990s, a small group of amateur historians in Liverpool, United Kingdom, made a startling discovery. Local rumors had long circulated concerning a network of tunnels, even an entire subterranean world, hidden beneath the streets of the city’s Edge Hill area. The group was able to verify that a number of underground entrances did indeed exist, on land previously owned by a mysterious recluse named Joseph Williamson. Excavating by hand, they could not possibly have imagined what they were about to discover.

Born in 1769, Williamson worked his way up through the ranks at a tobacco factory owned by the wealthy Tate family of sugar importers. Williamson married into that family, took ownership of the factory, and prospered. He retired when in his 40s, and here is where the story proper begins. For reasons that are still unclear (and still heavily debated), Williamson, utilizing a small army of employees, began carving out immense underground chambers beneath his homes. It must have taken a large amount of his fortune and a huge portion of his time. But why? When you’re rich, perhaps nobody asks. It’s known that Williamson was secretive about his tunneling activities, never revealing their true purpose. Fine arches led nowhere; certain passages were carved out and then filled in. All activity ceased with his death, and the labyrinth remained untouched until the locals whose voices you will hear in this excellent article rediscovered this giant conundrum.

“The whole place is so full of mysterious questions — an awful lot of questions that nobody will ever be able to answer,” Stapledon told The Post. “When you look at some of the structures underground, you think: How the hell did he create these? What the hell was he doing building all this stuff?”

Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, U.K. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.

Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.

The bowerbird, which lives on the east coast of Australia, has an abiding eye for anything blue. Solitary males travel great distances to bring back all manner of blue objects to decorate their nests. Shells, flowers, plastic bottles, and feathers are all fair game, and bowerbirds have even been known to grind up blue pigments with their beaks and paint their homes accordingly. This chromatic fealty is less a matter of design sense than of courtship; the behavior is just one of the bowerbird’s mating tactics. And he has a spiritual brother in ostentatious accumulation: humans.

Collecting as a human practice dates back to at least the third millennium BCE, when the upper circles of Sumerian society gathered extensive hoards of luxury items. Later, the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt (350 – 30 BCE) sought out books from across the known world and housed them in the ill-fated Library of Alexandria. This is all a long way from beer cans, dolls, and genitalia — just some of the obsessions featured below — but the link isn’t too hard to discern. For Tom Hanks it’s typewriters; for Rod Stewart, it’s model trains. 

Although little research has been undertaken when it comes to humans, anecdotal evidence suggests that collectors of the homo sapiens variety also tend to be male. As a broad psychological explanation, a large collection indicates wealth, knowledge, and industry — all traits appealing to a potential partner. But while that explains amassing watches or antique furniture, it doesn’t do the same for those who seek out toenail clippings or soap bars. The collector’s drive, it seems, can suggest as many questions as answers. 

Indeed, reading through these illuminating pieces reveals the many deeper purposes to collecting. Bonding, fellowship, greed, and even education can play a role. There may even be something more mysterious, more primordial, at play: Unearthing a new “treasure” can release serotonin directly into our brains. This mood-boosting reward could well hearken back to our distant past. Some psychologists highlight a link between collecting and our in-built drive to create a safe, orderly environment. As Randy Frost muses in his book on the subject, Stuff, some scholars “suggest that collecting is a way of managing fears about death by creating a form of immortality.” There may be no simple answer, but the art of collecting can certainly provide a simple joy — and reading about it can provide that joy in some small measure as well.

The Men Who Meet Up in Motels Across America…to Trade Old Beer Cans (Deborah Ager, Narratively, July 2018)

In France, it’s wine; in Russia, vodka. China has baijiu, while in Madagascar, rum is the national tipple. But in Belgium, Germany, and the U.S. (the last of which provides the backdrop for this piece), beer stands at the top of the pile. Here, beer is a cultural marker and a personal identifier, an integral part of any meaningful event. With this fantastic article, we move away from the decorative and historical into what I feel is true collector territory: beer cans. 

When I look around at my piles of records and books, I justify these acquisitions as things that provide something definable beyond their physical selves. Beer cans, though, belong in a different category. While they serve a valid role as socioeconomic and aesthetic artifacts — as do all man-made objects —  it’s hard to consider used beer cans worth anything in terms of material value. The Brewery Collectibles Club of America, though, does not agree. This piece introduces you to them and other collectors across several continents, all of whom hold an abiding passion for items that most of us would throw in the recycling bin without a moment’s thought. This is the beating heart of the genuine collector exposed — a heart that quickens over a thing only their fellow brethren would understand.

Dave Larrazolo, an ex-Army drill sergeant, is wearing a bumblebee costume and adjusting his antennae when I speak with him at the canvention. He explains that he doesn’t bother with “rust,” which refers to rusty beer cans. Another collector tells me Larrazolo’s collection is known to be “squeaky clean.”

Despite the group’s communal nature, friendly divisions exist: rusty cans versus clean, new crowns versus old, plastic-lined versus vinyl-lined crowns. Other collectors specialize by geography, brand, or type — West Virginia or California, Ballantine’s Beer or Hamm’s, quarts or 12-ounce size. There are accessories, too, like can openers referred to as “I-7s.”

Wings of Desire: Why Is An Obsessive British Collector Risking Jail To Kill Rare Butterflies? (Tim Lewis, Esquire UK, February 2018)

England’s beautiful Cotswolds is not a place readily associated with international crime, but the picturesque region nonetheless serves as backdrop to this absorbing tale of the murky side of collecting. The practice of lepidoptery (collecting butterflies) has its roots in the 17th century, when explorers and scientists, largely from the West, journeyed thousands of miles under harsh conditions in order to discover new species of flora and fauna. These groups were almost exclusively composed of educated, wealthy white men who possessed the means and opportunity to travel — and who often took with them a sense of superiority and entitlement, together with a distinct lack of respect for the native populations in the lands where they quested. Yet, while lepidoptery’s colonial and ethical legacy remains questionable, its practitioners’ study and documentation advanced our collective understanding by leaps and bounds.

In its time, lepidoptery was a highly fashionable pursuit. You can count at least two 20th-century British prime ministers, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill, among their number, along with highly respected author Vladimir Nabokov. These days, with much more attention focused on humanity’s interactions with nature, butterfly collecting is far from mainstream. Yet, in the U.S. and U.K., lepidoptery is still perfectly legal. There are important caveats — some species and certain designated areas are protected — but where there is prohibition, as this story makes clear, there is always money to be made.

A butterfly’s wings, their colours and patterns, are made up of tiny, overlapping scales. These are at their brightest for the first day or two, but over time, the scales fall out or rub off. No discerning collector would be interested in a faded specimen like this one, but there is still something pulse-quickening about seeing it. The large blue might be persnickety and ornery, but that is what has given this tiny insect its power over humans for centuries. As David Simcox says that day to a middle-aged couple who had driven more than 150 miles on a futile search for a large blue: “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be any fun at all.”

The Garbage Man: Why I Collect Racist Objects (David Pilgrim, Ferris State University News, 2005)

When David Pilgrim began acquiring racist memorabilia in his early teens at the beginning of the 1970s, he could not have known that he would become a sociologist, or that his collection would eventually lead to the founding of the Jim Crow Museum, an institution that may discomfit but whose educational importance cannot be understated. If it feels obvious that he writes “Racist imagery is propaganda,” consider that such imagery is the most powerful social tool in the world. As much as we might like to pretend otherwise, we are deeply susceptible to visual cues, most of which are intentionally designed for just that purpose — whether racist caricatures on 1950s product packaging or modern-day memes. This is what makes Pilgrim’s work so vital.

Perhaps the most telling (and most moving) moment in the piece comes when the author describes how many of the young people he talks to, both black and white, are at first skeptical about the atrocity of the Jim Crow era; when they see the items he has collected, though, the illusion falls away. When in the presence of a large number of such objects, Pilgrim writes, the overwhelming feeling is one of heavy sadness. It is one thing to read about history, and quite another to hold a living piece of it in your hands.

I suppose every sane black person must be angry, at least for a while. I was in the Sociology Department, a politically liberal department, and talk about improving race relations was common. There were five or six black students, and we clung together like frightened outsiders. I will not speak for my black colleagues, but I was sincerely doubtful of my white professors’ understanding of everyday racism. Their lectures were often brilliant, but never complete.

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Unboxing the Doll Collector (Jackie Powers, Slow Notion, July 2021)

This thought-provoking piece acknowledges another driving factor behind collecting: comfort. It’s telling that the author’s collection began at a difficult period in her adult life, and Power’s particular passion, dolls, links back to childhood — a time when, hopefully, we experienced the least stress, worry, and hurt. That said, there is surely an element of solace to all collecting, be it sneakers, records, or beer cans. Childhood memorabilia covers a wide area, and the practice of adults continuing to pursue their youthful obsessions has become, if not quite fashionable, then at least acceptable. As EmGo, a Transformer-collecting vlogger popular with my own son, reminds us: “You don’t stop playing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop playing.” It’s a sentiment eruditely echoed by the author here. 

Powers’ dolls intersect with her other great loves of fashion, art, and design, but she finds herself faced with an ethical dilemma. Dolls mean plastic and packaging. Buying brand-new items is inarguably bad for the environment. The solution, as she reasons, lies in concentrating on the second-hand market — seeking out and even restoring items that already exist. There’s much to be said for this approach, but the real fascination in this piece comes from Powers’ meditations on what it means to be “adult,” and the stigma that often surrounds holding on to our childhood loves.

Although there is no time in my life where I haven’t loved dolls, there was a time in my life when I felt like I wasn’t supposed to love dolls. I can trace this shift into shame to another rough transitional moment in life — age 12. As I’m sure it was for many, for me, being 12 was awful. It was a time when I felt like I was trapped between leaving childhood behind and facing the unknown world of being a teenager and all the social pressures that came along with it.

Welcome to the World’s Only Museum Devoted to Penises (Joseph Stromberg, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2013)

The protagonist of this piece, Icelandic history teacher Sigurður Hjartarson, considers himself a collector just like any other. His chosen subject, however, stands out (pardon the pun) as one of the more unusual on this list, or any other. There is nothing salacious about Hjartarson’s hobby; his interest is scientific and, in a liberal country such as Iceland, largely accepted as such. Reading this absorbing piece, however, it’s hard not to sense that Hjartarson revels, even if just a bit, in the quirkiness of his particular field; the Folklore Section of his museum includes an empty glass jar labeled “Homo sapiens invisibilis.”

Again, though, the real interest lies in the genesis and pursuit of Hjartarson’s hobby. As I suspect is the case with many collections, the teacher received his first specimen as a gift — an entirely unexpected and serendipitous spark that started the Icelander on his unique journey. Think of your own obsessions and interests. Where did they come from, and how would you be different without them? In Hjartarson’s case, you can’t help but admire the extraordinary lengths (again, forgive me) taken to complete his museum, and the disarming charm its curator displays.

He has three more donation letters hanging on the wall—from a German, an American and a Brit who visited the museum and were moved to sign away their penises after death—but every year that passes makes them less valuable. “You’re still young,” he said, poking me in the shoulder forcefully, “but when you get older, your penis is going to start shrinking.”

Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, U.K. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.

Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands

From left: Said Ag Ayad of Tuareg ensemble Tinariwen; Finnish singer Marja Mortensson; a Tuvan throat singer of the Alash Ensemble; Galbadrakh “Gala” Tsendbaatar of Mongolian folk-metal band The Hu. (Photos: Getty Images)

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By Chris Wheatley

“I’m not interested in heritage,” said musician Martin Carthy on the eve of his 70th birthday. “This stuff is alive.” With these words, Carthy, a celebrated and driving force in English folk music across several decades, appears to perfectly capture folk’s persistent prominence across the boundaries of language and geography. It is ironic, perhaps, that the genre is often portrayed as outdated, irrelevant, even elitist — because folk music is, in fact, the antithesis of all these things. It is a living, revolutionary art form documenting the social concerns of humanity, created by the people, for the people.

But folk music can also be difficult to define. Carthy himself cites African-American blues guitarist Elizabeth Cotton as a major influence. Mongolian band The Hu blends the sounds of horsehead fiddle with electric guitars and drums; in Japan, Wagakki Band incorporates the traditional three-stringed shamisen into its blend of heavy rock. This sort of recombinant cross-pollination isn’t new: Since the widespread commercialization of sound recordings began in the early 1900s, arguments around “authenticity” and the tension between tradition and innovation have raged across numerous cultures. Such debates reached an absurd height during Bob Dylan’s infamous mid-’60s tour of the U.K., when an audience member, appalled at the singer’s switch from acoustic to electric instruments, shouted that the musician was “Judas!”

Martin Carthy himself, who has enjoyed a lengthy and successful career both as a solo artist and as a member of renowned groups Steeleye Span and The Albion Band, is no stranger to blending modern electric instruments with traditional acoustic equipment. Yet the concerns outlined above, as we can see from some of the articles presented below, continue to this day, alongside fears that traditional art forms may die out altogether: abandoned by subsequent generations in favor of newer, shinier sounds; falling foul of commodification; even, in extreme cases, deliberately smothered by political forces.

Which brings us back to the definition of folk music itself. What can we say for sure? “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.” So observes Oscar Isaac’s titular musician in Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen brothers’ cinematic ode to the genre. I can think of no better way to describe this music, which continues to bring joy, pride, and hope to millions of listeners around the world.

Arctic Magic (Chris Campion, The Guardian, January 2007)

For some time, I have been fascinated by the yoik singing of the Sami people. Native to what is now Northern Finland, Sweden, and Norway, the traditional yoik song form serves many purposes. It can be an identity marker for individuals living or dead, a tool of communication with animals and nature, even a doorway to other realms. It is an ancient tradition, with roots in prehistoric times, but it is only relatively recently that this artform has seemingly been brought back from the edge of extinction.

This article by Chris Campion provides a magical peek into the world of the yoik as it is experienced and practiced firsthand, chronicling the efforts of two young Sami determined to preserve and revive their beloved tradition. Happily, in the 15 years since the publication of this piece, yoik appears to have flourished, with several artists and bands recording commercially. Besides the group Adjágas, who you will read about in this essay, albums by Ára, Áššu, Marja Mortensson, Hildá Länsman, and Viivi Maria Saarenkylä have garnered significant acclaim.

“Sometimes in adjagas I feel that I understand all the world,” says Sara. “I understand all the questions that I sometimes wonder about. You feel that and then you are really open for these yoiks to come. If I couldn’t yoik, I think I would die.”

Desert Blues | The Music Moves in Circles (Randall Grass, Kosmos Journal, Fall 2022)

Blues music’s standard 12-bar chord progression, which most experts agree developed from African American slave work songs and spirituals, underpins almost all Western popular music. What an absolute delight it is, then, to see the blues travel full circle, exported back to the country of its ancestry, reclaimed, repurposed, and revitalized. So-called “desert blues,” emanating from Africa’s Saharan region, has been steadily growing in popularity over the last 20 years, driven by the band Tinariwen, whose founding members first united while in exile in Algeria.

Tinariwen blends electric guitars with traditional instruments to create a beguiling blanket of sound that encapsulates the majesty and stark beauty of the Sahara, and their commercial success opened the door to a wave of like-minded musicians. The interaction between “Western” blues and the African continent, however, goes back much further, as explored in this fascinating piece by Randall Grass, in which the author recounts his experiences with local musicians while living in Kano, Nigeria, during the mid-’70s.

Afterwards, I shared a beer with Alhaji Liu in a little bar. As we talked, via a translator due to my limited Hausa, an Albert King blues song played over the bar’s sound-system. “I can play that,” Alhaji Liu said. That was my introduction to what has often been labeled “desert blues.”

Harry Smith’s Musical Catalogue of Human Experience (Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker, September 2020)

It is difficult to name a record (or records) more influential than Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which served as a virtual bible for ’50s and ’60s folk revivalists, Bob Dylan among them. Comprising recordings bought and selected by Harry Smith himself, this three-LP collection still stands as a cornerstone of Western popular music, and yet its genesis and rise to prominence form one of the strangest and most inscrutable tales in music history.

Central to this story is the wonderfully bizarre figure of Smith himself. A bohemian outlier with esoteric tastes, including a passion for magic and alchemy, he was only in his early twenties when he put together his “anthology.” A practicing member of The Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (a church founded by the infamous occultist and “magician” Aleister Crowley), Smith held a predilection for the arcane, as evidenced by some of the wilder cuts included in this set. Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” and Chubby Parker’s “King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O” are both fine examples.

In this fantastic essay, Amanda Petrusich explains exactly why this “strange cosmology of music” continues to enjoy reverential status.

Once, in a strange fury of obsession, I spent several months on the lower level of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, trying to track down Smith’s own 78s, some of which he had sold to the library before he died. Smith believed that objects have power; I thought there might be something to learn from holding those records in my hands.

A Revival of Indigenous Throat Singing (Joel Balsam and Stephanie Foden, BBC, April 2021)

The particular strength of folk song is that it intrinsically belongs to its people. The music unites communities, entertains them, and documents their loves, losses, and struggles. It’s a genre that has long been used to stir passions, swell pride, and resist injustice and oppression. Little wonder, then, that colonialists and dictators the world over have routinely sought to curtail, or even extinguish, the traditional music of the land. Folk music provides identity and hope, not least in the extraordinarily intimate tradition of Inuit throat singing.

In the early 20th century, Christian missionaries in the Arctic branded the music as blasphemous, even Satanic, in nature — and throat singing all but died out. This moving article by Joel Balsam and Stephanie Foden follows Shina Novalinga and her mother, Caroline, as they fight to reinvigorate the tradition via the distinctly modern means of social media.

In March 2020, when the first wave of the pandemic hit Montreal, Shina started sharing throat singing videos on TikTok. The videos also showcased the gorgeous handmade parkas sewn and designed by her mother along with facts about Indigenous history. “For me it’s so normal, but I realised how unique it is for everyone to hear that, and even just different aspects of our culture, our food, our clothing,” Shina said.

Rhythm in Your Blood: Meet the Young Artists Keeping Cuba’s Traditional Music Alive (Marisa Aveling, Pitchfork, June 2016)

Cuba occupies a special place in music history. Partly thanks to its unique blend of Spanish, African, and Caribbean music, the island’s creative influence extends across the globe, feeding numerous genres from jazz and rock to ballroom dance, classical, and even hip-hop. The spectacular success of the album Buena Vista Social Club and its accompanying documentary film, both of which showcased some of the best of the country’s talent in the mid-’90s, brought Cuban music to a new generation — but much remains to explore.

Ironically, Cuba’s vibrant traditional music scene may well have thrived within its borders in part thanks to its relative isolation from the outside world. However, with the country appearing to gradually temper its hard-line stance, that relaxation may catalyze change. As Marisa Aveling observes in this fascinating piece, some are concerned that, new freedoms and visions — not to mention alien influences — may well distract young people away from their historic art forms. Enter the Manana music festival, the first such international event to take place on the island, and one aimed squarely at preserving and developing Cuban sounds.

“It’s an expression of Cuban style,” says Geovani del Pino, the 73-year-old director of Yoruba Andabo, the Latin Grammy-winning 15-piece band that has been fundamental in representing rumba internationally. “I don’t think that someone who calls themselves Cuban feels a conga without his feet moving.”

Griot on Wheels (Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post, May 1978)

Almost every civilization, it seems, has its version of the West African griots: itinerant musicians and orators, revered for both their skills and the vital role they play in preserving history and continuing traditions. Celtic cultures had ancient bards; Vikings had their skalds; classical Greece, its rhapsodes. Griots, however, still form an integral part of contemporary societies from Senegal and Mauritania to Nigeria and Mali, serving as living libraries, genealogists, entertainers, and ceremonial functionaries.

In this beautiful piece from 1978, Joseph McLellan talks to Batourou Sekou Kouyate, a griot from Bamko, Mali, as he tours America in an old station wagon, making new friends, new connections, and speaking with passion about the ancient craft of his art.

“In my country,” he said in an interview at the Museum of African Art, “I can go with my kora to anyone’s house and say, “I want you to help me,’ and with three wives and 10 children, I could move into that house and spend my whole life there, and when I die my children could stay there after me. That is what we call nobility.”

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Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, UK. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.

Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Krista Stevens

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By Chris Wheatley

Call them recluses, hermits, or even solitudinarians, examples of folk choosing to live a life apart from their fellow humans are as old as the written word. Many, but not all, of these ancient hermits were motivated by spiritual reasons; in medieval times, anchoresses and anchorites volunteered to be physically sealed into stone chambers abutting churches or monasteries, providing themselves with a literal barrier from the world. Such intentional isolation, in the religious sphere, is often associated with profound wisdom and spiritual pureness — qualities said to arise from a renunciation of material comforts. Hermits have never been confined to the theological world, however. There have always been instances of “ordinary” people living purposefully solitary existences, be it in the remote wilderness or amid the hustle and bustle of modern cities.

To some of us, the idea of such isolation seems terrifying. To others, the thought of an extended period of peace and quiet, a chance to step back and reconnect with ourselves, holds an undeniable appeal. How many of us, though, would be comfortable with the notion of living in solitude for weeks, months, years, even decades? It has long been held that humans are social creatures, and mental health experts are quick to warn against the debilitating effects of loneliness. But weighted against this are numerous stories of those who have discovered great solace in the solitary life.

What remains inarguable is that our fascination with those who chose to live a life removed endures to this day. How can someone exist in this manner, we feel compelled to ask, and why would they choose to do so, considering (or perhaps because of) the modern world’s affordances? The articles curated below delve deep into the mysterious and compelling world of hermits, and surface with some surprising, even moving answers to that very question.

Day of a Stranger (Thomas Merton, Hudson Review, July 1967)

The writer, theologian, social activist, and monk Thomas Merton makes for an unlikely example of a maverick, but certainly that is how he was regarded among many of his peers in the Christian faith. Merton was born in France, his father a New Zealand-born painter, his mother an American Quaker and artist. The family soon settled in the United States, where Merton would eventually enter into the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Catholic monastery in Kentucky. For the last few years of his life he lived alone as a hermit within the Abbey grounds.

A gentle, peaceful character with a deeply poetic soul, Merton was a man ahead of his time, a proponent of interfaith understanding during an era in which such an enterprise could be considered provocative, even heretical. Merton engaged in spiritual dialogue with the Dalai Lama, esteemed Japanese Buddhist D. T. Suzuki, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, doing much to bring these figures and their philosophies to the attention of the Western world. His 1948 autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, caused a seismic shift in the collective consciousness of the American public. In the piece below, the theologian himself writes with moving simplicity, eloquence, and passion on the solitary life and the madness of the modern world.

One might say I had decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife. Out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world.

The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit (Michael Finkel, GQ, August 2014)

Many of us, I suspect, have experienced a disconnect during a social encounter, whether it be because of a generational gap, a difference in socioeconomic backgrounds, or because the person with whom you are communicating hails from an entirely different part of the globe, with an unfamiliar language and unknown customs. In today’s hyper-connected world, however, it’s almost impossible not to find commonalities of experience. Most of us share the same daily concerns, and the majority are aware of significant global and cultural events. Imagine, however, that you had intentionally cut yourself off from “history” for close to three decades. What would it be like to find yourself thrust back into society, forced to live among people with whom you share little to no common ground?

This is exactly what happened to Christopher Knight, who spent 27 years living in a tent in the wilderness in Maine, only venturing forth at night to steal food and other items necessary for his survival, before his eventual capture and arrest. What followed, as recounted in this article, tells us much about the modern world, but perhaps the most fascinating element here is the question of exactly why Knight disappeared into the woods, and why he never willingly returned. In order to discover more about the man and his story, writer Michael Finkel had to gain the trust, and eventual friendship of sorts, of a man who could barely recall how to communicate with his fellow humans, or tolerate such interaction for long. Finkel writes movingly of his efforts and emotions during this process.

“I don’t know your world,” he said. “Only my world, and memories of the world before I went into the woods. What life is today? What is proper? I have to figure out how to live.” He wished he could return to his camp—”I miss the woods”—but he knew by the rules of his release that this was impossible. “Sitting here in jail, I don’t like what I see in the society I’m about to enter. I don’t think I’m going to fit in. It’s too loud. Too colorful. The lack of aesthetics. The crudeness. The inanities. The trivia.”

The Peculiar Case of a Modern-Day Hermit (Paul Willis, Vice, November 2015)

In this essay, writer Paul Willis chronicles a time in his life when he felt driven to escape a hectic New York existence — not just to experience the hermit life, but to reconcile the contrasting views of the phenomenon itself. Why is it, he asks, that although psychologists have long been aware of the mental health risks of isolation, stories persist of individuals thriving in such conditions? Could it be that some of us are simply more suited to a solitary existence? Moreover, if humans are social creatures, why do many hermits report feelings of profound peace, freedom, and oneness arising from a life bereft of social interaction?

To attempt to answer these questions, Willis headed out in search of Arizona’s ghost towns, abandoned relics of the mid-1800’s copper rush, and the hermits rumored to inhabit them. In our minds, recluses tend to fall into one of two categories — those with a tragic backstory, deserving of our compassion and understanding, and those who are perfectly content with their solitary lives, whose privacy we dare not interfere with. In the person of Virgil Snyder, Willis finds a soul who seems to exhibit both extremes. Everyone has a story; this is a cliché, but also a truth. Who we are now is the culmination of the events that have shaped our history. Virgil Snyder’s story is as touching and troubling as it is commonplace. Perhaps that is exactly what makes him so interesting.

His beard was shorter than in the photo and he wore a grey pullover that hung limp over his sleight frame. He wanted to know if I had brought him beer and when I told him I had, he said he knew he liked me from the moment he saw me. I told him about a woman I met in Cleator, who had told me she thought Virgil was more free than anyone she knew. He shrugged and said he couldn’t care less what others thought.

Mystery Man: Will Anyone Ever Know the Real Story Behind the Leatherman? (Jon Campbell, Village Voice, June 2015)

Hermits have always been considered mysterious, unpredictable, even dangerous. This speaks to our innate fear of difference. How can we trust someone who refuses to live a “normal” life? The reality, of course, is that those who live in “civilized” society, dressing to our standards and abiding by our ways, are no more or less likely to prove treacherous. Nevertheless, hermits, by wont of their unconventionality, continue to be figures of enduring fascination, attracting distrust and curiosity in equal measure.

In this article, Jon Campbell meets a man obsessed with unknotting the riddle of one such character: the “Leatherman,” who, over a 30-year period in the mid-to-late 1800s, caused such a stir in the northeastern United States that stories and myths pertaining to him endure to this day. The Leatherman story reveals much about our need to understand the hermit’s motives and thoughts. What we don’t know about someone, we are likely to invent, and so it is proven here. Will we ever know the truth? Perhaps the real question at the heart of the Leatherman legend is why we remain so driven to find out.

Leatherman was frequently described in newspaper accounts as intelligent. His eyes would light up as if he understood what people said to him; he simply chose not to respond. Recently some researchers have posited the idea that Leatherman may have fallen somewhere along the autism spectrum. They cite as evidence his obvious discomfort around people, his rigid adherence to a schedule, his meticulous craftsmanship.

The Oracle of Oyster River (Brian Payton, Hakai Magazine, September 2018)

The subject of this piece by journalist Brian Payton is an extraordinary man named Charles Brandt. At the time of the writing of this piece, Brandt, a Catholic priest, had been living in his self-made hermitage off Canada’s Pacific Coast for nearly 50 years. Despite this isolation, Brandt kept in touch with the world on his own terms, working as a writer, naturalist, ornithologist, and book conservator. What makes this story especially poignant is that Brandt’s personal journey was very much inspired by the author of the first entry on this list, Thomas Merton — a beautiful circularity. So large has Merton’s influence been on Brandt that the latter even named his hermitage Merton House. The two men even met once, at the Abbey of Gethsemani, before Brandt settled into his island home.

It is fascinating to see that, unlike many of the other hermits on this list, Brandt managed to find a balance, enjoying a life of peace, meditation, and quiet reflection, while still engaging with society in vital ways. His work preserving treasured books, and seeking to preserve the natural ecology he treasured to an even greater extent, is as moving as it is inspiring.

“We really have to fall in love with the natural world”—this is Brandt’s refrain. To save something you need to love it, to love something you need to consider it sacred, he says. “Your wife or your children or the natural world. Only the sense of the sacred will save us.”

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Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, UK. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.

Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.

By Chris Wheatley

“Before Elvis there was nothing,” John Lennon famously once said about his own musical awakening — but, as Presley himself frequently acknowledged, there would have been no Elvis without the blues.  It’s no exaggeration to state that the blues underpins almost all modern music. Beyoncé, Kanye, Ed Sheeran: None of these artists would exist without it, and the musical ancestors of all three can be precisely traced back to the Deep South of the United States during the antebellum period.

But what exactly is the blues? We know it when we hear it, thanks to certain definable musical elements like chord progressions, yet arguments still exist as to the ancestry, lineage, and “true” nature of the genre. It’s an art form wrapped in myth and mythology, from the otherworldly provenance of Robert Johnson’s sublime gifts to Afro-Christian notions of evil and the poignant folklore found in the songs of Mississippi John Hurt. Yet this is part of the blues’ enduring appeal: Untangling the webs and uncovering truths, in a search for a genuine understanding of the history and origins of the blues, is almost a requirement for being a fan. Alongside hip-hop, reggae, and grime, this is music indelibly linked to the conditions from which it arose, an art form that also serves as social commentary, communal history, and cathartic release.

Blues songs speak of the joy and suffering of being alive. They also remind us of one of the darkest periods in human history, of the terrible depths to which we are capable of sinking should we abandon the notion that all people are equal in value. This is a message that, in all likelihood, will never cease to be relevant. A hundred years on from its birth, the blues continue to speak to the heart. The articles below collectively do a fine job of capturing the essence, meaning, history, and importance of this most singular sound.

Searching for Robert Johnson (Frank Digiacomo, Vanity Fair, October 2008)

Perhaps more than any other bluesman, Robert Leroy Johnson epitomizes the lasting allure and deep mythology of the genre. The legendary artist recorded just 29 tracks before dying at age 27, performing mostly in bars and on street corners across Mississippi in the 1930s. His physical presence feels as spectral as his music. Just two extant photos of the man exist, and very little firsthand information. Much of Johnson’s enduring fame centers on the perennial blues myth that the musician owed his guitar skills to the devil, to whom he traded his soul at a crossroads outside of Clarksdale. In fact, this particular tale predates Johnson, and has been attributed to many other bluesmen over the years, yet it sticks to Johnson like no other.

Digiacomo’s feature explores the continuing fascination and mystery surrounding this singular artist, though it does so obliquely: The incredible and convoluted story begins one day in 2005, when Steven “Zeke” Schein, a guitar expert and Delta blues obsessive, stumbles upon what he believes to be a never-before-seen photograph of Johnson. The ensuing tale illustrates in compelling prose the intriguing intangibility of the musician’s life and work.

With the eBay photo still on his computer monitor, Schein dug up his copy of the Johnson boxed set and took another look. Not only was he more confident than ever that he had found a photo of Robert Johnson, he had a hunch who the other man in the photo was, too: Johnny Shines, a respected Delta blues artist in his own right, and one of the handful of musicians who, in the early 1930s and again in the months before Johnson’s death, had traveled with him from town to town to look for gigs or stand on busy street corners and engage in a competitive practice known as “cuttin’ heads,” whereby one blues musician tries to draw away the crowd (and their money) gathered around another musician by standing on a nearby corner and outplaying him.

Jackie Kay on Bessie Smith: ‘My Libidinous, Raunchy, Fearless Blueswoman’ (Jackie Kay, The Guardian, February 2021)

Jacqueline “Jackie” Kay is a remarkable figure. A writer who holds both an MBE and CBE for services to literature, her many other achievements include winning the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and becoming poet laureate of Scotland. All this despite the considerable challenges of her personal background.

In this moving piece, Kay talks fondly and with passion about the inspiration she found, as a gay Black girl growing up in 1970s Glasgow, in the life and music of blues singer Bessie Smith. Kay transports us back to her formative years, welcoming the reader inside the mind of her younger self to encounter the feelings, strengths, and flights of fantasy that sprang from her internal relationship with the legendary singer. Later, in 1997, Kay would publish her own critically acclaimed biography of the artist: Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend.

On the front cover she was smiling. Every feature of her face lit up by a huge grin bursting with personality. Her eyes full of hilarity. Her wide mouth full of laughing teeth. On the back she was sad. Her mouth shut. Eyes closed. Eyebrows furrowed. The album cover was like a strange two-sided coin. The two faces of Bessie Smith. I knew from that first album that I had made a friend for life. I would never forget her.

J. R.’s Jook and the Authenticity Mirage (Greg Brownderville, Southwest Review, 2017)

Musician and writer Greg Brownderville takes a literal step back into the mythical blues landscape in this evocative piece about friendship, music, and an almost-forgotten way of life, when a chance encounter leads him to a blues-jam party hosted by a character who lingers large in the author’s memory.

For many blues aficionados, nothing matters more than “authenticity,” whatever that nebulous term is taken to mean. This article discusses that, for sure, but the love and passion at the heart of this essay is to be discerned in thoughts about friendship, community, and the true warts-and-all history of a music that will forever be entangled with the socioeconomic conditions from which it arose.

Pudding slung her arm around me and shouted, “J. R.! If this boy can blues, remember: I’m the one invited him. If he can’t blues, it’s all your fault for handing him this guitar.” J. R. howled a boisterous laugh. But then he said with a serious, almost-preacherly voice, “Listen. We tickled to have this young man here tonight. I believe we done found us a new friend in blues.”

Keeping the Blues Alive (Touré, Smithsonian, September 2016)

The current state of the blues landscape continues to provoke arguments, introspection, and fears. Some would even contest that “real” blues is a thing of the past, its present-day protagonists serving up a distilled version of an art form forever frozen in time. Such conditions make this piece by renowned music critic Touré a fascinating read, as he documents a visit to the 32nd International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee.

While Memphis in recent years has become home to a celebrated rap movement, Touré discovers a city in which the blues are very much alive and kicking. Fans will find much to celebrate and find themselves able to take a hatful of hope from this beautifully written piece, which covers blues from all angles, from the deeply personal to the highly pragmatic. To hear modern advocates speak with such passion, knowledge, and reverence is as inspirational as it is moving.

“The blues is an antipsychotic to keep my people from losing their minds,” she begins. “It started with the moans and groans of agony, the slave roots of it all.” Then she sings, “There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names! There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names!” She shoots us a coldblooded look.

What the Mississippi Delta Teaches Me About Home—and Hope (Wright Thompson, National Geographic, June 2020)

Wright Thompson grew up in Clarksdale, a town in Mississippi that strongly asserts its claim as “the birthplace of the blues.” It certainly has a wealth of history to back this up: Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, and a host of other musicians were born there, and the town remains an enticing draw for modern blues fans.

I suspect that this article, in which Wright Thompson and his young family take a short trip through the Mississippi Delta, will resonate with many. COVID has changed some more than others, but for all of us, the world will never be quite the same. Here, Thompson explores how blues music — full of life, longing, hope, and pain — resonates across the decades. The blues frequently evoke suffering and heartbreak, but it should be remembered that it is, at its core, a purging, and in many ways a purifying force.

I’ve been thinking recently about how these specific blues could be the soundtrack for a country trying to emerge from quarantine in one piece. A friend I trust told me that sentiment sounds like a kumbaya, and I know what he means. There is real pain and irreducible violence in the music. It records a very particular history.

When Young Elvis Met the Legendary B.B. King (Daniel de Visé, Lit Hub, November 2021)

Two “kings” meet here in this illuminating piece — an excerpt of de Visé’s book King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King — which does a fine job of capturing the magic and majesty of two stars from different sides of the blues line. Presley’s music and heritage is every bit as caught up in the blues as B.B.’s. To modern eyes and ears, the legacy of Elvis can seem problematic. For some it is a clear-cut case: Elvis stole Black music. The reality is far more nuanced. Presley was very much aware of his overwhelming debt to the blues, an art form he loved and admired above all others, and this piece offers a telling glimpse into the complicated and bigoted world of the music industry in ’50s/’60s America.

B.B. himself is one of the few “classic” bluesmen to have extended his professional work into the modern age. He began his career at the tail end of the ’40s, and played his final live show in 2014. A living link to the past and revered by countless musicians from the ’60s onwards, King remains one of the greatest exponents of electric blues. There is another vital link here: Producer Sam Phillips, the man who “discovered” Elvis, also produced many of King’s early recordings.

You’ll find a striking line in this article in the form of a quote from Phillips: “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Whether Phillips truly said this is up for debate. Many have argued that if Phillips did say such a thing, it would have been in the spirit of frustration, and bemoaning such racism. This is a man who championed Black musicians long before — and long after — the coming of Elvis. Regardless, the sentiment lays bare the appalling racism that was endemic to the business at that time.

“But Elvis was different. He was friendly. I remember Elvis distinctly,” B.B. recalled, “because he was handsome and quiet and polite to a fault”—not unlike B.B. himself. “Spoke with this thick molasses Southern accent and always called me ‘sir.’ I liked that. In the early days, I heard him strictly as a country singer,” which is how most people regarded Elvis in the early years. Elvis made his first television appearance on a program titled Louisiana Hayride. “I liked his voice, though I had no idea he was getting ready to conquer the world.”

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Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, UK. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.

Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands