At ϳԹ, we publish dozens of stories, videos, and photo essays per week. The result can be overwhelming: Lots of stories and not enough time to read them.
So here's our digest of the reading you should catch up on this week. Our goal’s simple: to collect the most interesting, overlooked, and worth-your-time reads from ϳԹ and our other favorite sources.
What We Wrote:
It’s all too easy for headlines about climbing to lean on clichés about the climbers themselves—that these people are daredevils, thrill seekers, adrenaline junkies. But to most climbers, nothing is quicker to trigger the gag reflex.
In the pre-wetsuit age, surfers were still essentially Stone Age technologists.
If I were this guy, I wouldn’t be into climbing either. Imagine if you were new to skiing and took a go at the bunny slope, only to watch his face fall when you couldn’t (and didn’t want to) huck cliffs.
When the runners complete their 100-mile journey on the Placer High School track later this month, several elites will need to put their post-race exuberance on hold to provide a urine sample.
If you’ve ever been to a climbing gym, you’ve probably heard someone screeching like a pterodactyl as they pull through the toughest sequence of holds.
What We Read:
Most disheartening (but important) reporting: “”[5280]
Most unexpectedly thrilling climate policy story: “”[Foreign Policy]
Best commencement speech (we might be biased): “” [Hampton Sides, republished on Longreads]
Most attitude-filled open letter from an athlete to a president: “”[SNEWS]
Most personal look at an under-the-radar illness: “”[Esquire]