Every December, I showcase the work of other writers. They are total strangers to me, but have written some article or essay of exceptional merit during the previous 12 months.

So I share their work with you—to expand their audience, and give you access to writing you might find enjoyable or enlightening or inspiring.

Below is this year’s list of my favorite online articles. As always, I focus mostly on writing about music, arts, media, and culture. But I’m willing to include almost anything, if it captures my fancy.

If you have suggestions to add to the list, please share them in the comments.

Happy reading!

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The Best Online Articles of 2025

“Vanity Fair’s Heyday” by Bryan Burrough, The Yale Review, March 14, 2025

I’m probably breaking some unwritten law of publishing, but here it is: For twenty-five years, I was contracted to produce three articles a year, long ones, typically ten thousand words. For this, my peak salary was $498,141. That’s not a misprint—$498,141, or more than $166,000 per story. Then, as now, $166,000 was a good advance for an entire book. Yes, I realized it was obscene. I took it with a grin….

“Finding Peter Putnam” by Amanda Gefter, Nautilus, June 17, 2025

The 60-year-old man lying on the street, as far as anyone knew, was just a janitor hit by a drunk driver. There was no mention of it on the local news, no obituary in the morning paper. His name might have been Anonymous. But it wasn’t.

His name was Peter Putnam. He was a physicist who’d hung out with Albert Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, and Niels Bohr....

Robert Works Fuller, a physicist and former president of Oberlin College, who worked closely with Putnam in the 1960s, told me in 2012, “Putnam really should be regarded as one of the great philosophers of the 20th century. Yet he’s completely unknown….”

“The Naval Scientist Who Wanted to Know How Football Players Would Survive Nuclear War” by Chris Roberts, Defector, January 24, 2025

In January 1955, a lifelong football fan approached Lou Spadia, the general manager of the San Francisco 49ers, with a peculiar request: Would his players like to participate in a science experiment at an atomic research