Inside the February 2025 Issue
Barrett Swanson on sobriety and transcendence at Bonnaroo; Caitlín Doherty on the last days of Davos; Justin Nobel searches for Simon & Schuster’s radioactive oil waste in South Texas, and more.
February 2025
[ F O L I O ]
High and Dry
Sobriety and transcendence at Bonnaroo
By Barrett Swanson
“It’s entirely possible that, decades from now, historians will regard the present moment as the Age of the Festival. And so it may well be that our endless sacraments of self-care and communal transformation are nothing more than the symptoms of a deeply noxious culture, one that is desperately trying to heal itself through the ablutions of mass catharsis. Of course, I did not have much hope that Bonnaroo would offer spiritual nourishment… I was curious about the Soberoovians, who seemed to occupy a curious place at the festival and appeared to commit their lives to a different set of values. Their sobriety felt less like escapism than it did a perceptual advantage, and in the end, it turned out that they alone could properly diagnose us.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • S W I T Z E R L A N D ]
At the Summit
The last days of Davos
By Caitlín Doherty
“If the World Economic Forum is an event designed to expedite commercial connections between business and government while remaining bland and noncommittal on matters of world affairs, then this has also been the exact model through which the United Arab Emirates has thrived in recent years: court American and Chinese investment; allow Russian oil to flow; throw money at tech unicorns; establish numerous semiautonomous, corporate-friendly ‘zones’; and above all, keep goods moving.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • T E X A S ]
A Good Company
Searching for my publisher’s radioactive oil waste
By Justin Nobel
“KKR’s purchase of Simon & Schuster meant that my book—the product of a seven-year investigation into the radioactivity brought to the surface by oil and gas development, and the various threats it posed to the industry’s workers, the public, and the environment—would be owned by a publishing house that was owned by a private-equity company that owned an oil and gas company.”
[ A N N O T A T I O N ]
The Dangerous Problem
The century-long struggle to prove the Collatz conjecture
By Joe Kloc
“Known as the ‘Dangerous Problem,’ the conjecture has a knack for drawing even the best mathematicians into periods of fruitless work. The Fields Medal winner Terence Tao dedicates a day or two per year to working on it. Mays, who is now retired from the math department of West Virginia University, puts in a few months of effort every half decade or so. ‘That problem,’ he said, ‘has been the source of pleasant reflection and dreams of glory for me for more than fifty years.’”
[ S T O R Y ]
Half-Believers
By Liam Sherwin-Murray
“The history itself doesn’t bother me. Everyone with an appetite has history, and I want appetite. It’s the pat explanations she absolves herself with. They seem evidence of an all’s-fair fatalism that will eat me alive unless I armor myself by fucking someone else as soon as possible. It’s the only viable solution. I have no right to be angry with her since we’re liberated people having fun.”
[ R E V I E W S ]
Such a Schemozzle
The beauty of John McGahern’s prose
By Sam Sacks
“In McGahern’s books, Beckettian rejection collides with an impeccably classical style. He describes the jarring emptiness of Catholic ritual in prose of such sonorous beauty that it achieves the soothing rhythms of prayer.”
D E P A R T M E N T S
[ L E T T E R S ]
Emmet Elliott, David Velasco
[ E A S Y • C H A I R ]
By Matthew Karp
[ T H E • H A R P E R ’ S • I N D E X ]
[ R E A D I N G S ]
There Are More Ways to Show Devotion
and more...
[ F R O M • T H E • A R C H I V E ]
By David Samuels
[ P U Z Z L E ]
See the full table of contents
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