We Still Don’t Know How to Navigate the Cultural Legacy of Eugenics By Audrey Farley Feature From abortion to immigration, a long-debunked scientific movement still casts long, confusing shadows over our most fraught debates. Friends: We Need Your Help to Fund More Stories
‘The Underland Is a Deeply Human Realm’: Getting Down with Robert Macfarlane By Tobias Carroll Feature “I thought the underland would be — of all the landscape forms that have drawn me to explore them — the most uninhabited. This proved wildly incorrect.”
Don’t Come Around Here No More By Rebecca Lehmann Feature Tom Petty’s psychedelic Alice in Wonderland video reminded one woman of the way sexual harassment shaped her adolescence and made her want to disappear.
School for Girls By Jasmin Aviva Sandelson Feature Years after recovering from anorexia, Jasmin Sandelson writes a letter to the high school friend she idolized, and explores how hunger, love, and envy shaped — and ended — their relationship.
This Month In Books: ‘Look at the World, and Not at the Mirror.’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is about seeing the big picture.
Editor’s Roundtable: From WeEarth to The Aunt-o-Sphere (Podcast) By Longreads Commentary Longreads editors discuss stories in New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Outline, and CrimeReads.
All the Obstacles in a Mother’s Way By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Everyone has something to say about this mother’s body, career, and parental choices.
MH370 Five Years Later: Will We Ever Know What Happened? By Krista Stevens Highlight “The idea that a sophisticated machine, with its modern instruments and redundant communications, could simply vanish seems beyond the realm of possibility.”
Sex Work and Workers: A Reading List to Get You Beyond Law & Order SVU and Pretty Woman By Sara Benincasa Reading List The best way to learn what being a sex worker is like is to listen to sex workers.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Jody Rosen, Reeves Wiedeman, Rebecca Liu, Sara Rimer, and Will Hodge.
‘Brokenness and Holiness Really Go Together’: Darcey Steinke on Menopause By Jane Ratcliffe Feature Darcey Steinke says that most menopause memoirs “end with this come-to-Jesus moment of, ‘Then I accepted hormones.’ I’m not against it, but … I wanted to hear what it’s like for other women.”
Bearing the Weight of My Grandfathers’ Old Clothes By Aram Mrjoian Feature In adopting outerwear worn by the men who came before him, Aram Mrjoian considers his childhood misperceptions of traditional masculinity.
The View From 5-Foot-3 (and a Half) By Soraya Roberts Feature Maybe we can’t transcend height, but can we transcend the internalized misogyny that causes us to limit ourselves and judge other women?
Nestlé Is Sucking the World’s Aquifers Dry By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight The multinational corporation is gradually privatizing a natural resource.
How the Cosby Story Finally Went Viral — And Why It Took So Long By Longreads Feature A journalist who reported on the accusations long before they went viral wonders, “What kind of profession am I in, where stories have no logical reason for unfolding?”
Total Depravity: The Origins of the Drug Epidemic in Appalachia Laid Bare By Longreads Feature In an excerpt from his essay collection, Australian journalist Richard Cooke reports on the American opioid crisis through the astonished eyes of a foreigner visiting steel and coal country.
The Gymnast’s Position By Dvora Meyers Feature Aimee Trepanier was proud to showcase the pose that started her 1993 gymnastics floor routine in a billboard ad off I-15 in Salt Lake City. But when Utahns looked up, that’s not what they saw.
William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll By Longreads Feature From Bob Dylan to David Bowie to The Beatles, the legendary Beat writer’s influence reached beyond literature into music in surprising ways.
We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Very Beginning By Longreads Feature Early electric cars performed better in cities than internal combustion vehicles, but didn’t give riders the same illusion of freedom and masculine derring-do.
This Month In Books: ‘Look at the World, and Not at the Mirror.’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is about seeing the big picture.
‘The Underland Is a Deeply Human Realm’: Getting Down with Robert Macfarlane By Tobias Carroll Feature “I thought the underland would be — of all the landscape forms that have drawn me to explore them — the most uninhabited. This proved wildly incorrect.”
‘Brokenness and Holiness Really Go Together’: Darcey Steinke on Menopause By Jane Ratcliffe Feature Darcey Steinke says that most menopause memoirs “end with this come-to-Jesus moment of, ‘Then I accepted hormones.’ I’m not against it, but … I wanted to hear what it’s like for other women.”
Time To Kill the Rabbit? By Lily Meyer Feature In two new novels, the bunnies are anything but cute. (Unless … you use magic to turn one of them into a pre-TB Keats, or a talky Tim Riggins.)
We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Very Beginning By Longreads Feature Early electric cars performed better in cities than internal combustion vehicles, but didn’t give riders the same illusion of freedom and masculine derring-do.
We Still Don’t Know How to Navigate the Cultural Legacy of Eugenics By Audrey Farley Feature From abortion to immigration, a long-debunked scientific movement still casts long, confusing shadows over our most fraught debates.
Editor’s Roundtable: From WeEarth to The Aunt-o-Sphere (Podcast) By Longreads Commentary Longreads editors discuss stories in New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Outline, and CrimeReads.
Editor’s Roundtable: Shorthand, Looking Away, Getting It Wrong (Podcast) By Longreads Commentary Longreads editors discuss stories in The Cut, The New Yorker, and The California Sunday Magazine.
Caught Between Borders By Annie Hylton and Malia Politzer Feature Closed borders and closed minds are trapping African LGBTI asylum seekers in hostile countries.
Big Problems and Big Paychecks in West Texas Oil Country By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight As the current oil boom attests. West Texas’ oil deposits come with high social and environmental costs.
School for Girls By Jasmin Aviva Sandelson Feature Years after recovering from anorexia, Jasmin Sandelson writes a letter to the high school friend she idolized, and explores how hunger, love, and envy shaped — and ended — their relationship.
Bearing the Weight of My Grandfathers’ Old Clothes By Aram Mrjoian Feature In adopting outerwear worn by the men who came before him, Aram Mrjoian considers his childhood misperceptions of traditional masculinity.
The View From 5-Foot-3 (and a Half) By Soraya Roberts Feature Maybe we can’t transcend height, but can we transcend the internalized misogyny that causes us to limit ourselves and judge other women?
Time To Kill the Rabbit? By Lily Meyer Feature In two new novels, the bunnies are anything but cute. (Unless … you use magic to turn one of them into a pre-TB Keats, or a talky Tim Riggins.)
Father’s Little Helper By Scott Korb Feature While under the influence of Valium, Scott Korb reflects on all the fathers he could have been and the father he has become.
