Automattic

Our relationships between food and death. A history of the last meal: “In America, where the death rows—like the prisons generally—are largely filled with men from the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder, last-meal requests are dominated by the country’s mass-market comfort foods: fries, soda, fried chicken, pie. Sprinkled in this mix is a lot […]

How a food-trading company based in Germany illegally imported Chinese honey into the U.S.—”the largest food fraud in U.S. history”: “ALW relied on a network of brokers from China and Taiwan, who shipped honey from China to India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea, Mongolia, Thailand, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The 50-gallon drums would be relabeled […]

The first wild wolf to enter California in more than eighty years sparks a debate about conservation: “The return of wolves to the West has indeed resulted in a trophic cascade of benefits to the ecological landscape. In Yellowstone, for example, the absence of wolves meant the park’s elk and deer were fat, slow, and […]

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.

A small-time fighter’s big-time hoax: “While Rowan was ferrying drugs in Three Rivers in 2010, before he began cage fighting, he claimed to have lost Gomez’s shipment, maybe worth as much as $80,000. As Rowan told it, a group of thieves jumped him, cracked his ribs and stole the drugs. “Now, Rowan owed money to […]

In 2011, we highlighted an essay called “Weekend at Kermie’s,” by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens, published by The Awl. Stevens is now back with a new Muppet-inspired Kindle Serial called “Make Art Make Money,” part how-to, part Jim Henson history: “The real breakthrough in Henson’s career—the thing that would make him a mogul—was Sesame Street. It […]

Fifteen-year-old Audrie Pott took her own life after nude photos of her were circulated around school by high school classmates. Three boys were later arrested and charged. It’s “a shocking tale of sexual assault in the Digital Age” that’s becoming less uncommon as a number of high-profile cases similar to Pott’s makes headlines while many […]

Kyle Dickman, Outside magazine’s associate editor and a former hotshot firefighter, pieces together the final hours of Prescott, Arizona’s Granite Mountain Hotshots, the elite team of firefighters who battled the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30, 2013. Nineteen of the crew’s 20 members would perish: “The hotshots who’d brought their phones texted or called their […]

The opening chapter of To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, the new book by Cris Beam, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick. Thanks to Cris and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sharing it with the Longreads community: “In this time period, which can be months or many years, […]

An intimate look at the life of Caitlyn Pinto, a ten-year-old girl living in Canada who loves Justin Bieber and has thoughtful ideas about racism and bullying: “Caitlyn has an iPod touch, which allows her to surf the Internet, though she uses it mostly for iMessage, and FaceTime, a kind of one-on-one video chat. She […]