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WE’VE HAD TWELVE months of compiling excellent longreads every week for Sitdown Sunday – and now it’s time to pick the best of the bunch.
Here were the highlights from across 2025, month by month.
An excellent piece of reporting – and a must read for fans of spy novels – on how the West identified and tracked down a network of undercover Russian spies who had become embedded in society under new identities.
(The Wall Street Journal, approx 31 mins reading time)
In truth, the Soviet collapse left a network of sleeper agents stranded abroad, still living undercover, awaiting orders from a vanished empire. By the turn of the millennium, Putin was president, reinvigorating the program he’d idolized as a young man. Under his watch, dedicated schools trained an army of new recruits in the languages, history and cultural habits of target countries. Young officers were encouraged to marry fellow agents, for cover and to ward off loneliness. Many studied Spanish and Portuguese to deploy to Latin America, where Russia could exploit patchy birth records and corrupt officials to more quickly secure a new identity. They could be activated at Putin’s direction.
In 2023, a journalist received an envelope containing a flash drive with tens of thousands of secret files. It came from John Williams, a vigilante who had spent two years infiltrating the highest ranks of prominent right-wing militias in the US.
In this fascinating read, Josh Kaplan reports what Williams uncovered.
(ProPublica, approx 40 mins reading time)
Williams had recently made a secret purchase of a small black device off Amazon. It looked like a USB drive. The on-off switch and microphone holes revealed what it really was: a bug. As the two men chatted over cups of cannoli-flavored coffee, Williams didn’t notice when Kinch’s dog snatched the bug from his bag. The night before, Williams had slept in the guest room. The house was cluttered with semiautomatic rifles. He had risked photographing three plaques on the walls inscribed with the same Ernest Hemingway line. “There is no hunting like the hunting of man,” they read. “Those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else.” They spotted the dog at the same time. The bug was attached to a charging device. The animal was running around with it like it was a tennis ball. As Kinch went to retrieve it, Williams felt panic grip his chest. Could anyone talk their way out of this? He’d learned enough about Kinch to be terrified of his rage. Looking around, Williams eyed his host’s handgun on the kitchen counter.
It’s a secret, invite-only exclusive club in Disneyland in California. It took one couple nearly a decade to get in, but then they got kicked out after it was alleged that they were drunk in public. They would not go willingly.
(Vulture, approx 20 mins reading time)
Five days later, Anderson received a letter letting him know that his, along with his wife’s, Club 33 membership had been suspended. A member of Club 33 has to abide by certain rules, and Anderson had been allegedly drunk in public. Game over. It had taken him and his wife nearly a decade to get into the club in the first place, and since then, they’d spent about a third of every year in Disneyland. They celebrated nearly every holiday at the club, their son’s 21st birthday and others, a handful of marriage anniversaries. And so instead of going quietly, the Andersons decided to sue to get back in, claiming breach of contract and slander. Anderson wasn’t drunk, he said — he’d had a vestibular migraine. And furthermore, he was being targeted. The Club 33 he’d joined five years earlier, the very last thing that Walt Disney designed before he had died, had been ruined by expansion, greed, and punitive managers obsessed with waging campaigns against anyone who dared to complain about anything. “Instead of taking the feedback as an opportunity to improve the club,” Anderson says, “they took it as an opportunity to get rid of people.”
Outside the Welsh town of Chepstow, an innovative project to build an underwater human settlement is taking place. It’s being funded by an anonymous private investor with deep pockets, and the founders say they want it up and running by 2027. Lisa Bachelor went behind the scenes to check it out.
(The Guardian, approx 14 mins reading time)
Deep will offer the same experience but with more sophisticated accommodation, at greater depths, and allow scientists to work at those depths for greater periods of time. Their sentinels will also be able to be redeployed to different places. The idea is that a foundation construction will be attached in the desired location at the required depth and then the sentinels will be lowered down to click into the base like “a ski boot being locked into a ski”, Kernagis says. The basic sentinel houses up to six people but the idea is that multiple sentinels could be attached to potentially form multi-nation, multi-purpose research stations (or perhaps, one day, an underwater village for ordinary people). In the past, a lot of the early underwater habitats were meant to be redeployable, but it was difficult to do that, so they would be put down in one place and stay there for years. “You’re restricting what marine science you can do if you can only do it from one place,” Kernagis says.
At a time when Google’s algorithm is making its search results less useful and social media feels like it’s overrun with bots, bigots and bad AI, people are flocking to Reddit. Adrienne LaFrance explains why.
(The Atlantic, approx 9 mins reading time)
Google, once the unsurpassed King of Search, has become hostile to its users, surfacing hilariously unhelpful AI responses (including telling people to eat rocks and glue) and making it woefully difficult to retrieve credible information, even when you know exactly what source you’re looking for. Reddit, by contrast, offers truly specialized knowledge for every need. It provides travel tips to every conceivable destination and practical advice for every imaginable home-improvement project. One friend told me about using Reddit to find the right tension for his tennis-racket strings and the best embroiderer for a custom hockey jersey.
And although the wisdom of the crowd is not fact-checked, Reddit’s culture tends to be equal parts generous and skeptical—meaning that good, or at least helpful, information often rises to the top. Recently, on the r/creepy subreddit, someone posted about having found a tiny skeleton under the floorboards in their house. “Am I cursed for eternity now?” they wanted to know. The top reply came from someone who explained that they were a zooarchaeologist and could therefore be “95% certain this is a mouse skeleton,” and offered to send their own photo of a mouse skeleton for reference. “Hell yeah,” someone else chimed in. “Ask a random question and get an answer from someone who specializes in the exact niche. Amazing.”
Matt Morrow- or ‘Vegas Matt’ – is a different kind of gambler. He loses thousands of dollars every day on camera. But he has millions of followers online who watch him obsessively, bankrolling his betting. Perfectly harmless… right?
(Slate, approx 24 mins reading time)
Vegas Matt was on the cusp of a remarkable achievement. In a matter of weeks, his YouTube channel would cross the million-subscriber mark—a metric that pairs nicely with the million or so people who follow his Instagram account, and the 685,000 on his TikTok. New videos appear daily, and they all follow the same format: First, Vegas Matt counts out a hefty wager in front of a blackjack table or a slot machine. Then, like so many gamblers, he simply tries his luck. The camera is framed to provide the illusion that the viewer is in the captain’s chair, preparing to immolate $3,000 on the altar of chance. Throughout all this, Vegas Matt displays no elite strategy, acumen, or gamesmanship. He does not claim to have an insider’s edge or an esoteric jackpot-juicing technique. No one watching his videos is going to pick up tips to improve their approach. But that’s the magic: He’s utterly relatable. One of the enduring axioms of the gambling world is that despite anyone’s best efforts, the house always wins. So, in the language of casinos, to be relatable is to eat shit, constantly, and nevertheless crawl back for more. For amateur gamblers like me, these videos are the closest we can get to the intoxicating precarity of a big bet without risking a dent to the checking account.
Not a single dire wolf has been seen on Earth in over 10,000 years, when the species went extinct. But a Dallas-based biotech company has claimed to have used both cloning and gene-editing to birth three dire wolf pups.
Experts have disputed that the pups are actually dire wolves. But what could this development mean for other endangered species?
(TIME, approx 23 mins reading time)
Relying on deft genetic engineering and ancient, preserved DNA, Colossal scientists deciphered the dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common gray wolf to match it, and, using domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, brought Romulus, Remus, and their sister, 2-month-old Khaleesi, into the world during three separate births last fall and this winter—effectively for the first time de-extincting a line of beasts whose live gene pool long ago vanished. TIME met the males (Khaleesi was not present due to her young age) at a fenced field in a U.S. wildlife facility on March 24, on the condition that their location remain a secret to protect the animals from prying eyes.
Matthew Walther’s obituary of the late pontiff looks at the legacy he leaves.
(The Atlantic, approx 11 mins reading time)
Perhaps Francis’s real legacy is discord. Catholics could not agree about the value of his words and acts or even their meaning, and these disagreements gave rise to further misunderstandings and recriminations. Francis himself was responsible for at least some of these misunderstandings; when given a chance to clarify his intentions, he tended to prefer inscrutability. It is even possible that he found division valuable. His declaration before an audience of pilgrims in 2013 now appears prophetic: “I want a mess.”
This article features two interviews with Donald Trump – one where two reporters called his mobile number – where he discusses his comeback election victory and the way he is now wielding power.
However, as Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer report here, the cracks are beginning to show.
(The Atlantic, approx 54 mins reading time)
Apparently, as word of our meeting spread through Trump’s inner circle, someone had reminded him of some of the things we (specifically Ashley) had said and written that he didn’t like. We still don’t know who it was—but we immediately understood the consequences: no photo shoot, no tour of the newly redecorated Oval Office or the Lincoln Bedroom, and definitely no interview. But we’ve both covered Trump long enough to know that his first word is rarely his final one. So at 10:45 on a Saturday morning in late March, we called him on his cellphone. (Don’t ask how we got his number. All we can say is that the White House staff have imperfect control over Trump’s personal communication devices.) The president was at the country club he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. The number that flashed on his screen was an unfamiliar one, but he answered anyway. “Who’s calling?” he asked. Despite his attacks on us a few days earlier, the president, evidently feeling buoyed by a week of successes, was eager to talk about his accomplishments. As we spoke, the sounds of another conversation, perhaps from a television, hummed in the background.
This is a horrific, but important read. A team of journalists recount the final months of 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was detained by Russia, tortured and murdered. First-hand testimonies piece together what happened to her, as well as her bravery in reporting on the war.
(The Guardian, approx 12 mins reading time)
Information on the circumstances of her death is limited. Roshchyna was held without charge and without access to a lawyer. During her detention, her only known contact with the outside world was a four-minute phone call to her parents, a full year after she was taken. Preliminary forensics suggest “numerous signs of torture”, according to the prosecutor. Burn marks on her feet from electric shocks, abrasions on the hips and head, and a broken rib. Her hair, which she liked to wear long and tinted blonde at the tips, had been shaved. Sources close to the official investigation have also disclosed that the hyoid bone in her neck was broken. It is the kind of damage that can occur during strangulation. However, the exact cause of death may never be known because when her body was returned during the exchange on 14 February, certain parts were missing, namely the brain, eyes and larynx. A war crimes investigation has been opened with a view to prosecuting those responsible.
Two musicians released a jazz album on streaming services that shot straight to No 1 on the Billboard chart. A week later, it disappeared. The album got millions of streams. Except, as it turned out, no one was actually listening.
Kate Knibbs does a deep dive on the first AI music fraud case in the United States, and what the industry is facing.
(WIRED, approx 13 mins reading time)
Pulling up Spotify’s dashboard for artists, Hay scrutinized the analytics for the pair’s work. Listeners appeared concentrated in far-flung places like Vietnam. Things only got stranger from there. Here’s how Hay remembers it: He started receiving notices from distributors, the companies that handle the licensing of indie artists’ music. The distributors were flagging Smith and Hay’s music, from Jazz and from other projects, for streaming fraud and pulling it down. Smith told Hay it was a mistake and that Hay had messed up securing the proper rights for samples. Hay frantically tried to correct the issue, but the flagging persisted. Hay, panicking, badgered Smith to help him figure out what was happening. Finally, Hay says, Smith offered some answers: Smith had instructed his staff at the medical clinics to stream their songs. It didn’t sound like the full story.
A multibillion-dollar HR software company has accused its biggest rival of hiring a mole – an Irish payroll manager – to spy on them. The tech world is transfixed by the juicy battle.
(Bloomberg, approx 19 mins reading time)
O’Brien started at Rippling in 2023, working out of the company’s Dublin office. According to his affidavit, his interest began to wane after a year, leading him to explore opportunities in consulting or a role at another payroll startup. He reached out to Bouaziz, and the two men connected by phone, with O’Brien talking from a conference room at Rippling’s office. “I have an idea,” Bouaziz allegedly told him. He offered to pay O’Brien to stay at Rippling and spy for Deel. To make sure he wasn’t being too subtle, Bouaziz also mentioned James Bond. (Deel claims that the affidavit “is replete with falsehoods and grossly distorts the nature of O’Brien’s interactions with Deel” and that O’Brien gave the testimony “under extreme duress.”)
In late 2024, O’Brien and Deel executives agreed on an arrangement, according to O’Brien’s affidavit: They’d pay him in cryptocurrency worth €5,000 ($5,700) per month in exchange for frequent updates about Rippling. He and Bouaziz quickly settled into a rhythm. Bouaziz messaged O’Brien multiple times a day on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, often opening with “hi boss!” or “hey boss, can you search for…” and texting repeatedly if O’Brien didn’t respond. O’Brien said he took screen recordings of Rippling’s Slack channels and sent them to Bouaziz. If the information was helpful, Bouaziz would reply “this channel is beast” or “these are badass.” But if O’Brien’s information was a dud, he’d say the material was a “headache.”
The woman who was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and settled a sexual assault lawsuit against Prince Andrew died by suicide in April. This article pieces together her final days through photos, texts and diary entries shared by her family.
(The Times, approx 15 mins reading time)
For the first time, Virginia’s family is sharing a diary she kept from the beginning of this year, in which she shares her memories of her marriage as it was breaking down, as well as photos, text messages and legal filings, in which she alleges that Robert was violent, abusive and “emotionally and physically controlling”. Virginia claimed in her diary that her husband’s behaviour worsened as she became the face of the campaign to bring Epstein and others to justice. “The stronger I became, the scarier he became,” she wrote, accusing him of trying to stop her from “advocating for the victims of trafficking” and, in the final months, allegedly preventing her from seeing her children. “What you have to know about Jenna is she was never afraid of any of these people,” Sky said. “She was ready to move on with her life, but she wanted that life to be with her kids.”
Gillian Anderson, who plays Raynor Winn in the film adaptation of The Salt Path, stands beside the author at the premiere in Munich. Alamy Stock Photo
Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path, telling her unbelievable life story, sold millions of copies worldwide and was adapted into a blockbuster film. When a newspaper decided to investigate her tales, they uncovered a scandal.
(The Observer, approx 19 mins reading time)
Winn has since written two sequels and has a lucrative publishing deal with Penguin to produce at least one more. Five weeks ago The Salt Path reached new audiences when it was released in the UK as a film, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, and Winn is a co-producer. Standing proudly on the red carpet outside the Lighthouse Cinema in Newquay, Raynor, 60, told TV cameras at the film’s UK premiere that the experience was “almost unbelievable”. In that moment, she and Moth seemed like the ultimate examples of British grit and perseverance. Back in Wales, Hemmings saw a very different picture. Because she knew something about Winn that almost everyone – her publishers, her agents, the film producers – had missed. She knew that Raynor Winn wasn’t her real name and that several aspects of her story were untrue. She also believed she was a thief.
The normal markers of childhood in Gaza have been replaced by hunger, fear and trauma. Most no longer have access to education, and thousands have been orphaned. Some of those children tell their stories in this piece.
(The New York Times Magazine, approx 14 mins reading time)
Before the war, Ms. Abu Hilal said, Tala was the star of her class and sometimes got up in the middle of the night to cram for tests. “I wanted to be a doctor,” Tala said in an interview alongside her mother. “I wanted my daddy to build a hospital for me. I wanted to treat everyone for free. My daddy is in heaven now.” Their father, Ashraf Abu Hilal, a former janitor, tried to return to their home last August, seeking to retrieve some goods that he could sell for food, according to Ms. Abu Hilal. He never returned. A day later, his brother spotted him lying dead in a nearby street, Ms. Abu Hilal said. Nearby gunfire prevented the brother from reaching Ashraf’s body or discerning how he had died, Ms. Abu Hilal added. By the time they could reach the street safely, months later, little was left of the body, she said. (The Israeli military said it was unaware of the episode.) “I hear how other kids call their dads — and their dad’s reply,” Ms. Abu Hilal recalled Hala telling her. “I wish baba could answer me, too.”
Some men are paying thousands to have their legs surgically broken and lengthened so that they can be taller. Ruth Michaelson follows one man’s experience. (If you’re squeamish, be warned – there are some photos of the surgery included)
(The Guardian, approx 10 mins reading time)
Frank can reel off a list of negative experiences stretching back into adolescence that he believes stemmed from his height. There was the pain of his friends suddenly becoming taller than him after he stopped growing around the age of 15. There were the kids at school who taunted him for his height; a longtime online fan of his artwork who remarked, on meeting him, that Frank was “shorter than I expected”; or the guys who randomly shoved him in the street a few years ago, tearing out his headphones. They wouldn’t have done that to a taller man, he reasons. In Frank’s view, tall people don’t realise their privilege. “It’s hard to explain if you’re not a short man yourself, but in modern society it’s almost a curse,” he says, as he carefully keeps watch over his pain medication and blood thinners.
After novice hiker Michelle Vanek went missing on Colorado’s Mount of the Holy Cross in 2005, the search for her went cold. Nearly 20 years later, an all-women team of rescuers found her body. Heather Hansman writes about the case, including how a dream helped to re-open it.
(5280 Magazine, approx 17 mins reading time)
It’s not uncommon for hikers to run into trouble on Holy Cross. Vail Mountain Rescue responds to about 15 individuals or groups there each year. Scott Beebe, a longtime member of the team, says hikers tend to get confused near the summit. Instead of taking the correct route to the North Ridge trail, which looks steep from the top, they can mistakenly head down mellower-looking paths that actually dead-end above cliffs. The searchers traced these and many other routes, looking for Vanek, to no avail. A few days in, snow began to fall. By the eighth, when rescuers were trudging through two feet of powder, the search was called off. Everyone was baffled. “We ended up the last day with not a clue, not a gum wrapper, not a boot print, absolutely nothing,” wrote searcher Tim Cochrane in his report to the sheriff. “How can anyone just vanish into thin air?”
ChatGPT is creeping into relationships to an extent where it is now playing a role in the breakup of marriages. In this disturbing read, Maggie Harrison Dupré explains how partners are using the technology against each other.
(Futurism, approx 22 mins reading time)
Spouses relayed bizarre stories about finding themselves flooded with pages upon pages of ChatGPT-generated psychobabble, or watching their partners become distant and cold — and in some cases, frighteningly angry — as they retreated into an AI-generated narrative of their relationship. Several even reported that their spouses suddenly accused them of abusive behavior following long, pseudo-therapeutic interactions with ChatGPT, allegations they vehemently deny. Of course, there’s an ambiguity at the core of the phenomenon. Maybe some of these partnerships really were bad, and the AI is giving solid advice when it pushes users toward divorce or separation. Ultimately, it’s impossible to fully understand someone else’s relationship from the outside — but then again, isn’t that exactly what the AI is doing when it demolishes a marriage?
Problem gambling has often been referred to as a so-called “hidden addiction”. Now, with a phone in everyone’s pocket, it’s become more secretive and more problematic- particularly when it comes to young men and sports-betting.
(Rolling Stone, approx 27 mins reading time)
I put the obvious question to clinician after clinician: Why are young people, males in particular, so susceptible to sports-bet apps? Bechtold, the founder and director of the Better Institute in Pittsburgh, began with the mile-high view. “This generation was basically bred for addiction, [having been] raised on cellphones inches from their faces.” The feeds on those devices “disrupted their neural wiring,” leaving them anxious, impulsive, and susceptible to “stims that are quick and constant onscreen.” Their online childhoods also robbed them of life skills best learned by leaving the house. Fiscal savvy gained by working part-time jobs. Risk awareness from running the streets, and an acquired sense of consequences from actions. “When these kids go bust, time after time it’s the parents who bail them out,” says Bechtold. “Every family I deal with, I say, ‘Quit giving the kid money!’ And Mom says, ‘Oh, I’m not ready to do that yet.’”
Doug Whitney’s rare genetic mutation meant that he should have developed Alzheimer’s 25 years ago – but he didn’t, and he still hasn’t. Researchers trying to find out why are hoping they will discover something that could lead to wider prevention, or even a cure.
(The New York Times, approx 13 mins reading time)
For 14 years now, Mr. Whitney has been the one-person focus of exceptionally detailed scientific investigation, for which he travels periodically to St. Louis from his home in Port Orchard, Wash. It is not because he is ill. It is because he was supposed to be ill. Mr. Whitney, 76, is a scientific unicorn with potential to provide answers about one of the world’s most devastating diseases. He has a rare genetic mutation that essentially guaranteed he would develop Alzheimer’s disease in his late 40s or early 50s and would likely die within a decade. His mother and nine of her 13 siblings developed Alzheimer’s and died in the prime of their lives. So did his oldest brother, and other relatives going back generations. It is the largest family in the United States known to have an Alzheimer’s-causing mutation. “Nobody in history had ever dodged that bullet,” Mr. Whitney said.
When Ryan Borgwardt didn’t come home from a Wisconsin lake, his wife phoned the police. After weeks of searching, they found his kayak, his tackle box, his life vest, but not him. Then they discovered something that changed their investigation. Jamie Thompson’s terrifically-written mystery has a twist you won’t expect.
(The Atlantic, approx 50 mins reading time/1 hour 10 minutes listening time)
The deputies, obsessive fishermen, leaned in to study the lures, to see what kind of man the tackle box belonged to. His was a random assortment, the stuff of Walmart value packs, including the clip-on bobber balls that amateurs use. They also saw two sets of keys and a brown wallet. Ward removed the wallet, flipped it open, and found a driver’s license. He read the name: Ryan Borgwardt. Judging by the fact that the kayak was found approximately three-quarters of a mile northeast of Ryan’s last known location, and that the tackle box had shown up farther northeast, about where they would have expected after two days of drifting, the deputies’ best guess was that Ryan had fallen out of the boat, picked the wrong direction to swim, and drowned. Deputies discussed whether to enter Ryan as a missing person, which would have triggered checks in state and federal databases to see if he’d been in contact with authorities in other jurisdictions. They decided against it; Ryan wasn’t a missing person—he was somewhere in the lake.
MaryBeth Lewis gave birth to her 13th child at the age of 62. But she wasn’t done. This is the extraordinary story of how she tricked an IVF clinic, a judge and even her husband to get what she wanted, and the felony charges and the custody battle that followed.
(The New York Times, approx 35 mins reading time)
MaryBeth says Bob initially went along with the surrogacy plan. (He denies this.) Whatever Bob knew, he soon staked out a definite position: 13 kids were enough. His fellow retired FedEx pilots were on fishing boats in Florida; Bob still packed school lunches. He had a familiarity with cartoons like “Bluey” and “Cocomelon” better suited to a father half his age. The Lewises’ garage was a thicket of car seats, swim floaties and strollers. A party sign hung above the mess, mocking Bob: “HAPPY RETIREMENT.” Grandchildren were now arriving, and their third daughter, Liz, was considering having a child on her own. Bob and MaryBeth had promised to shower her with support if she did. In their kitchen one evening, MaryBeth again brought up the embryos. Bob lost it. He screamed at MaryBeth, just inches from her face. “Destroy them!” he cried. “I don’t want to do anything with them!” Bob stormed off. “That’s when I got a little bonko,” she says.
A TikTok star and her husband pulled off a murder plot so unusual that one of their lawyers used stupidity as a defence.
(Toronto Life, approx 30 minutes reading time)
They flagged a cab and rode, still covered in blood, back to their condo, where they stripped and put their clothes in a plastic bag. Li was scrolling on her phone when she came across a news item, a worst-case scenario they had not anticipated: Romano had been found—alive. The bullet had pierced her heart, and though she was bleeding profusely, she had regained consciousness. Afraid for her life and the life of her baby, she managed to crawl down to the curb. A few minutes later, a Good Samaritan spotted her on the road. By the time the paramedics and police arrived, Romano was barely breathing. The police, casing the scene, quickly found Pratt’s body along with a keychain bearing a picture of his young son smiling in a hockey uniform.
Since Rosie O’Donnell fled the US following Trump’s re-election, she has built a new life in Ireland with her 12-year-old Clay. She’s loving life in Dublin, but still gets triggered by Trump – the person she cannot stop thinking about.
(The Washington Post, approx 17 minutes reading time)
“At O’Reilly’s, the local pub, O’Donnell walks in and asks the bartender, whom she now knows, for a Smithwicks. He teases her for a second about the red ale that’s typically low in alcohol content: “You got your grandpa here with you?” On one visit, she says, she ended up talking all night to a young couple, even holding their baby. They were deep into the conversation before letting on that they knew who she was.
“You’re big fans, and you didn’t tell me for two hours?” she says with a laugh.”
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