To Love and Protect Each Other — From Bigotry By Jay Deitcher Feature After Jay Deitcher sits silent as his wife is verbally assaulted by his father’s racist friend, he grapples with the ways his family has been muted by trauma. Friends: We Need Your Help to Fund More Stories
Grow Up By Soraya Roberts Feature Being an adult at the end of the world means listening to children tell the truths grown-ups refuse to actually hear.
Mathematics as a Cultural Force By Jessica Gross Feature Historian Amir Alexander on Euclidean geometry’s far-reaching effects.
Climate Messaging: A Case for Negativity By Rebecca McCarthy Feature Nell Zink, Joy Williams, and a different kind of climate skepticism.
Editor’s Roundtable: Democracy Needs Healing Crystals By Longreads Commentary Longreads editors discuss stories in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Politico.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Prachi Gupta, Tess McClure, Anna Wiener, Ismail Muhammad, and Alex McLevy.
What Should Universal Basic Income Look Like? By Livia Gershon Feature Andrew Yang made it news, but we need a better plan.
Shelved: The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band’s “Brain Opera” By Tom Maxwell Feature What happens when you’re not different just for the sake of being different.
‘People Can Become Houses’ By Danielle Jackson Feature In her debut memoir, Sarah Broom builds her “obsession” with her family home — destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina — into a story of how families decide who they are, how they got here, and how they reconstruct themselves over and over again.
Your Healing Crystals Are Part of the Capitalist Exploitation Machine By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Healing crystals move from poor villages to first world consumers along a trail of death, ecological destruction, and capitalistic concentration of wealth.
The Bread Thread By Emily Weitzman Feature Emily Weitzman condemns the persistence of slut shaming over different stages in her life, and combats it with humor and…bread.
Grandiose and Claustrophobic: ‘Prozac Nation’ Turns 25 By Anne Thériault Feature Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestseller is deeply rooted in a specific, Gen-X cultural moment. Can it still speak to us in 2019?
A Close Look at the Thing We Call ‘Celebrity’ By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Why do we care about famous people?
I Will Outlive My Cat: A Reading List on Pet Death By Alison Fishburn Reading List Alison Fishburn shares seven longreads on how humans experience the death of their pets.
Cut From the Same Cloth By Myfanwy Tristram Feature Artist Myfanwy Tristram was irritated by her teenage daughter’s extreme fashions — until she took an illustrated journey into their origins.
Shelved: Van Morrison’s Contractual Obligation Album By Tom Maxwell Feature This is the sound of not really trying.
The Myth of Making It By Soraya Roberts Feature If the most financially and critically successful artists don’t feel successful, maybe there’s something wrong with how we think about success.
Paul Clarke Wants to Live By Rebecca Tan Feature When a promising student left a neighborhood full of heroin for the University of Pennsylvania, it should have been a moving story. But what does an at-risk student actually need to thrive — or even just to survive?
How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance By Longreads Feature In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.
McDreamy, McSteamy, and McConnell By Samuel Ashworth Feature Congressional fan fiction is real, it’s glorious, and it might be reshaping our political world.
Mathematics as a Cultural Force By Jessica Gross Feature Historian Amir Alexander on Euclidean geometry’s far-reaching effects.
Climate Messaging: A Case for Negativity By Rebecca McCarthy Feature Nell Zink, Joy Williams, and a different kind of climate skepticism.
Grandiose and Claustrophobic: ‘Prozac Nation’ Turns 25 By Anne Thériault Feature Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestseller is deeply rooted in a specific, Gen-X cultural moment. Can it still speak to us in 2019?
Regarding the Interpretation of Others By Patrick Nathan Feature When attempting to write a review of the official Susan Sontag biography, our reviewer finds himself on shaky ground after learning new information about the author.
This Month in Books: ‘I Don’t Want To Become a Giant Insect!’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is a bodily affair.
Editor’s Roundtable: Democracy Needs Healing Crystals By Longreads Commentary Longreads editors discuss stories in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Politico.
What Should Universal Basic Income Look Like? By Livia Gershon Feature Andrew Yang made it news, but we need a better plan.
Downsizing the American Black Middle Class By Bryce Covert Feature Government jobs helped thousands of Black families move into the middle class. Now, increasing calls for government privatization are pushing them back out.
Editor’s Roundtable: Fans, ‘Grams and Installment Plans By Longreads Commentary Longreads editors discuss recent stories in Inc., The Cut, and The Baffler.
How Thailand’s Rich Escape Prosecution By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Thailand’s criminal justice system is plauged by an accepted double standard, where corruption prevails.
Grow Up By Soraya Roberts Feature Being an adult at the end of the world means listening to children tell the truths grown-ups refuse to actually hear.
To Love and Protect Each Other — From Bigotry By Jay Deitcher Feature After Jay Deitcher sits silent as his wife is verbally assaulted by his father’s racist friend, he grapples with the ways his family has been muted by trauma.
What Should Universal Basic Income Look Like? By Livia Gershon Feature Andrew Yang made it news, but we need a better plan.
The Bread Thread By Emily Weitzman Feature Emily Weitzman condemns the persistence of slut shaming over different stages in her life, and combats it with humor and…bread.
Grandiose and Claustrophobic: ‘Prozac Nation’ Turns 25 By Anne Thériault Feature Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestseller is deeply rooted in a specific, Gen-X cultural moment. Can it still speak to us in 2019?
