Longreads

Atuf, the culture hero, turned to stone. So, too, did Inkelu, his sister. That is how things happened in the Tanimbar Islands. And after several months of travelling around this group of 65 islands…

TIME's social media editor Allie Townsend & social media associate Amy Lombard pick the 140 Twitter feeds that are shaping the online conversation in 2012. Let us know what you think of our…

Introducing Travelreads: The Best Storytelling for the Best Places in the World, Presented by Virgin Atlantic One of the coolest things about Longreads is when someone tweets:  “I’m…

The first story Maya wrote was about a world in which people split themselves in two instead of reproducing. In that world, every person could, at any given moment, turn into two beings, each one…

Jodi Ettenberg: My Top Longreads of 2011 Jodi Ettenberg is a frequent Longreader, ex-lawyer and founder of Legal Nomads, which documents her travels (and food adventures) around the world. ***…

Because I do not want to die in the brawny arms of an industrial-kitchen-fixtures salesman from Tulsa—at least, not one I’ve only just met—I don’t much care for airline…

Miranda July stood in her living room in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, apologizing for the sunfl

The cutting edge is in mobile and location-based technology, such as Grindr, a smartphone app for gay men that tells subscribers when there are other willing subscribers in their vicinity. Many Internet dating companies, including Grindr, are trying to devise ways to make this kind of thing work for straight people, which means making it work for straight women, who may not need an app to know that they are surrounded by willing straight men.

Gil Scott-Heron is frequently called the “godfather of rap,” which is an epithet he doesn’t really care for. In 1968, when he was nineteen, he wrote a satirical spoken-word piece called “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” It was released on a very small label in 1970 and was probably heard of more than heard, but it had a following. It is the species of classic that sounds as subversive and intelligent now as it did when it was new, even though some of the references—Spiro Agnew, Natalie Wood, Roy Wilkins, Hooterville—have become dated.