Rolling Stone ·
Daily Brief
Daily Brief
Your briefing — Sunday, November 15, 2026
- Thirty-six volumes, one forge: the Classics line is complete — The Classics shelf is finished: thirty-six annotated volumes, in ebook and paperback.
- A scene a day: Paul and Marry, all week — Premiere week begins: a new Paul and Marry short-drama scene every day, November 15–19.
- Book Two passes 109,000 words — Book Two of the Teraura Saga passes 109,000 words, with the road to Kepler taking shape.
- The emperors, filed by their own secretary — Two Roman historians join the shelf — Suetonius, who filed the emperors from inside the palace, and Tacitus, whose Annals reach us broken and are printed that way.
- Kepler Drift: a two-minute flight, built from scratch — On the Music desk: Kepler Drift, a deep-trance flight built from synthesized sound.
- Read it free first: the Reading Room is open — No account, no charge: the Reading Room opens Paul chapters 1–9 and a shelf of philosophy, free.
- A stage of our own — The house stage is open: BW Stage runs a daily vertical-video feed, and other creators are invited in.
Top Stories
The newest headlines from the wire feeds below, refreshed hourly. Headlines link to the outlet's own story.
ScienceDaily ·
Vitamin C could help block cancer-linked chemicals in your stomach, study finds
ScienceDaily ·
A common osteoporosis drug blocked spinal damage in a surprising new study
Fox News ·
Virginia parents charged after house party draws hundreds of teens, fireworks and alleged underage drinking
Fox News ·
Putin's war machine tied to troubling recruitment of young women as new deals emerge
Top & General
Fox News ·
Virginia parents charged after house party draws hundreds of teens, fireworks and alleged underage drinking
Fox News ·
Putin's war machine tied to troubling recruitment of young women as new deals emerge
Fox News ·
OnlyFans model Courtney Clenney moved to new prison, listed as minimum custody inmate: records
The Guardian ·
Gender-diverse Australian sailors barred from US submarines despite Aukus deal, documents reveal
BBC News ·
Iran targets US military base in Bahrain with drone attack
BBC News ·
South Korea's top scorer in tax accountancy exam admits cheating
BBC News ·
Staggered age of consent to be discussed after Brand case, minister says
NPR News ·
Midterm voters ended the long-running GOP dominance in state legislatures
NPR News ·
A new generation of disability rights activists carry on Judy Heumann's legacy
NPR News ·
New Mexico wanted free childcare for all. This is what's worked — and what hasn't
The Guardian ·
160 questions, only one wrong: top scorer in South Korea tax exam admits AI cheating
The Guardian ·
Anthony Albanese welcomes Trump-Xi-Putin summit – even as European leaders express reservations
Books & Classics
The Guardian Books ·
The unexpected power of fleeting friendships
The Guardian Books ·
‘She was a monster’: the real Patricia Highsmith, by the people who knew her
BBC Arts & Culture ·
Alleged Russell Brand rape victim wants age of consent law changed
BBC Arts & Culture ·
'It's like you're in one of his paintings' Kyffin Williams' art brought to life
BBC Arts & Culture ·
Star-studded MacGowan tribute album gave grieving wife purpose
BBC Arts & Culture ·
Hannah Fry feels 'unbelievably lucky' after cervical cancer treatment
The Guardian Books ·
‘It’s like the wild west’: how AI has rocked the literary world
NPR Books ·
Hop in: We're taking a pop culture road trip on Route 66
NPR Books ·
Rachel Maddow says the Justice Department is collapsing. Can it be saved?
NPR Books ·
Americans across the economic spectrum feel a 'panic' about finances, author says
The German book scene. LovelyBooks and Leserkanone, classics anniversaries and translation news from the German-language market, where Paul von Teraura already sits on shelves.
Books & reading culture. Public-domain anniversaries, reading habits, and library and bookshop news from the house's markets.
Sci-Fi & Space
Space.com ·
How escaping gases ripped apart a comet and caused it to become thousands of times brighter
Space.com ·
What's next for SpaceX's Starship after epic Flight 15 chopsticks catch?
Space.com ·
This Week In Space podcast: Episode 236 — Alienspotting
NASA ·
Outbursts from a Massive Star
NASA ·
Gemini Astronaut Photos Inspired Early Earth Observation Program
NASA ·
APOD: 2026 November 13 – NGC 206 and the Star Clouds of Andromeda
ESA ·
Hera spies a half-hidden asteroid moonlet
ESA ·
European orbiter detects hints of volcanic activity on Mars
ESA ·
Key outcomes of the 350th ESA Council meeting
Space watch. Agency releases, launches and sky events, summarized in our own words as they land — the natural neighbour of the Paul shelf. No items filed yet today beyond the house stories above.
Music
Rolling Stone ·
The Best Tech Gifts From Sony Cameras, Sennheiser, HP, and Blink
Rolling Stone ·
4 Gifts to Upgrade Your Family’s Holiday Gatherings This Year
Rolling Stone ·
Tech Gifts Starting at $25, From Health Gadgets to Home-Theater Gear
Rolling Stone ·
From Audio to Outdoors, These Are the Best Tech Gifts From Bose, Oura, Insta360, and More
Rolling Stone ·
‘SNL’: Watch Phoebe Bridgers Perform ‘Bobby,’ ‘Still Standing’
Rolling Stone ·
‘SNL’: Hippie John Mulaney Has Some Very Unhip Thoughts at Woodstock
NPR Music ·
Mathis Picard finds grounding in an uncertain world in his new album, The Sound Orchestra
NPR Music ·
Tiny Desk Radio: Nduduzo Makhathini, Burna Boy, Ayra Starr
The Guardian Music ·
James Blunt: ‘Do I have a nickname? Yes, it rhymes with blunt’
NPR Music ·
Men on a mission: U2 is back, again. Are they cool this time?
The Guardian Music ·
‘So lovely’: Stevie Wonder surprises Stalybridge restaurant with late-night visit and £1,000 tip
The Guardian Music ·
Sheherazaad: Khudgarzi review | Ammar Kalia's global album of the month
Guitar & the indie-music economy. The instrument world and what independence actually pays, written from inside it.
Science & Ocean
ScienceDaily ·
Vitamin C could help block cancer-linked chemicals in your stomach, study finds
ScienceDaily ·
A common osteoporosis drug blocked spinal damage in a surprising new study
ScienceDaily ·
NASA warns this year's Monster El Niño could be even bigger than legendary 1997 event
ScienceDaily ·
Uranus and Neptune’s bizarre magnetic fields may finally be explained
ScienceDaily ·
Astronomers discover a dead star spinning every 8 minutes and sending mysterious radio pulses
ScienceDaily ·
A simple supplement could help your immune system fight cancer and viral infections
The Guardian Environment ·
Surgery by fairy lights and truckloads of fruit: the sanctuary saving Cameroon’s chimpanzees
BBC Science & Environment ·
How to spot November's planetary parade in the pre-dawn sky
The Guardian Environment ·
Looking for an ancient tree worth a detour? There’s an app for that
BBC Science & Environment ·
SpaceX catches part of its Starship rocket on return to Earth
BBC Science & Environment ·
SpaceX successfully catches top of huge Starship rocket for first time
The Guardian Environment ·
LGBTQ+ protesters defy crackdown in Turkey to march with Cop31 activists
Ocean & wildlife. Belugas, seals, the Black Sea and the northern seas: science and conservation reporting, summarized in our own words with sources linked. This desk opens with the daily rhythm — no external items are carried until they can be read, checked and summarized properly.
The Forge
House news from Blacksmith & Witches — written and published by the house itself.
Books & Classics
Thirty-six volumes, one forge: the Classics line is complete
With Suetonius and Tacitus taking the last two places, the Blacksmith & Witches Classics line now stands at thirty-six annotated volumes, every one of them available as both an ebook and a paperback. None of the thirty-six is a bare reprint: each carries new editorial work — an introduction, notes, and, where the edition calls for it, illustrations or a new translation — built around a public-domain text chosen under the house rule that author and translator both died before 1972. It is, in the end, one shelf built by one person: emperors and philosophers, storytellers and historians, filed together.
Books & Classics
The emperors, filed by their own secretary
Suetonius wrote about the Caesars from an unusual seat: he had worked inside the imperial household, handling the emperor's own correspondence, and his Lives read like a personnel file kept by someone who had seen the palace from within. The new annotated edition of The Twelve Caesars uses John C. Rolfe's Loeb translation, with the house's own introduction and notes. One thing is stated plainly rather than patched over: the opening of the Life of Julius Caesar is lost in transmission, and the edition says so — it does not invent what the centuries dropped.
Books & Classics
The Annals as transmitted
Tacitus set out to write the history of the Roman empire under the successors of Augustus, and what survives of the Annals is Books I–VI and XI–XVI — a great history with its middle and end torn out by time. The new annotated edition prints the surviving books as they have come down to us, names the lost books openly, and adds nothing of its own to fill the gaps. Read this way, the book is two stories at once: the empire Tacitus described, and the fragile road — copyists, libraries, chance — by which any ancient text reaches a reader at all.
The Forge
A scene a day: Paul and Marry, all week
Premiere week for the Paul and Marry short drama runs from today through Thursday, November 19 — one short scene a day, five in all. The run opens with episode 2, “Sacred,” and closes on Thursday with episode 6, “Together.” Each scene is built from dialogue taken from the book's own text, with Paul and Marry as the lead pair: a novel, cut into daily scenes short enough to watch with morning coffee and, the house hopes, sharp enough to send a reader back to the page.
Music
Kepler Drift: a two-minute flight, built from scratch
Kepler Drift is the house's own deep-trance journey video: two minutes of slow cosmic flight, made to feel like drifting outward rather than launching. Nothing in it is stock sound — the music was synthesized from scratch for this piece, layer by layer, until the track itself carried the motion. It sits on the Stage beside a guest card, PLANNETTIC's “Centauri,” two different answers to the same question: how small can a trip to the stars be, and still feel like one?
Sci-Fi & Space
Book Two passes 109,000 words
Titans and Dragons of Zenmly, Book Two of the Teraura Saga, has passed 109,000 words in its current manuscript. The newest chapters — 56 through 59 — are written, and the ending is taking the shape the author has described for it: a road-to-Kepler story, in which Paul and Marry leave a Teraura under invasion for the resistance headquarters on Kepler. Paul's autism remains the saga's core turn: the aliens cannot invade his mind, and cannot use his body as a host. Book Two is still being finished; this desk will report its publication date when there is one to report.
Books & Classics
Read it free first: the Reading Room is open
Before anything is bought, it can be read. The house Reading Room carries the opening of the saga free — Paul of Teraura, chapters 1–9 — alongside a growing shelf of philosophy chapters from the Classics line, among them the complete Enchiridion of Epictetus. There is no account to make and nothing to install: the pages are ordinary web pages, made to be read in a browser and shared by link. It is the house's standing answer to the hardest question a new reader asks an unknown author — why should I start? Start free, and see.
Books & Classics
Paperbacks on Amazon: Paul and Chekhov, in print
Two house paperbacks are now live on Amazon through KDP. Paul of Teraura, Book One of the Teraura Saga, is listed at $12.99, and Chekhov's Selected Stories (Annotated) — ten stories in Constance Garnett's translations, with the house's introduction and notes — at $11.99. Print is the newest shelf for a house that began in ebooks, and it is not finished: a rotation of Classics paperbacks is still to come through the same channel, volume by volume.
The Forge
A stage of our own
BW Stage is the house's own vertical-video stage: a TikTok-shaped feed that Blacksmith & Witches runs itself, on its own site, with new viral batches posted daily. It began as a home for the house's films and music, and its door is open — other creators can list their work in the house marketplace and stand on the same stage. The reasoning is the house's usual one: platforms lend an audience and can take it away; a stage of your own is slower to fill, and it is still yours in the morning.
The Forge
Week ahead: a finale on Thursday, and new scenes for patrons
A note for the diary, filed in advance. On Thursday, November 19, episode 6, “Together,” closes the Paul and Marry premiere week on B&W Stream. Across the same days, Patreon carries Batch 5 of the patron scenes — the longer, patron-only side of the same production line. Premiere week was designed as one arc across two shelves: a free scene a day in the open, and the deeper cuts behind the membership door.
The Reader List
Read the first chapters free
Start with Paul of Teraura in the Reading Room, and taste the annotated Classics — first chapters free in the Reading Room. Join the list for book news and new episodes, straight to your inbox.