James Lasdun

Dec 13, 2023 | quicktelecast.com | James Lasdun |Ben Taub |Ronan Farrow |Nathan Heller

News exhaustion is a miasma that has afflicted almost all of us for some time now. We're drained by the physical and mental exertion that comes with following current events. The state of alarm--over American democracy, the pandemic, the climate, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and myriad smaller crises--has been near-constant. Our cortisol levels have been elevated for far too long.

Dec 13, 2023 | newyorker.com | Michael Luo |James Lasdun |Ben Taub |Ronan Farrow

I’ve been the editor of newyorker.com since early 2017 and have, naturally, paid close attention to our readers’ habits. The list of the most popular New Yorker stories of 2023, as measured by “engaged minutes”—the total amount of time readers spent on them—is striking to me for what is missing. No war in Gaza. No Trump. No politics. The top story is a true-crime tale by James Lasdun, about the Murdaugh murders in South Carolina.

Nov 13, 2023 | newyorker.com | Ed Caesar |Alec Wilkinson |James Lasdun |Nathan Heller

The Kingpin Who Kidnapped Migrants for RansomAn Eritrean trafficker promised to help Africans desperate to reach Europe—then brutalized them inside a Libyan compound while extorting their families back home. With his fortune, he partied in Dubai. November 6, 2023The Serial-Killer DetectorA former journalist, equipped with an algorithm and the largest collection of murder records in the country, finds patterns in crime.

Jun 6, 2023 | theparisreview.org | James Lasdun

She was a friend of my family—the Carlins, as I have chosen to call them. She and my father met in the fifties through the editor of the architecture magazine where she began her career. My father had taken her out a few times.

Mar 7, 2023 | newyorker.com | James Lasdun

In the course of the trial, someone called in a bomb threat. A defense lawyer pointed a rifle at the prosecution while proffering theories of how the shootings had occurred. Two jurors were knocked out by COVID-19 and two more owing to other medical problems. A fifth was removed on the last day for discussing the case outside court; as she was sent on her way, she told the judge she’d left a dozen eggs in the jury room, providing a rare moment of comic relief.