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Why do some people react so negatively to the idea of “extreme morality”? An interview with The New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar, whose latest book project examines the selfless acts of others: “If the suspicion is hypocrisy, I think we underestimate the sort of people I’m writing about—it’s entirely possible to live an extremely ethical life […]

A visit to the Prather Ranch Meat Company in California, which prides itself on high standards for handling cattle. But what does that even mean? “The phone in Prather’s modest beige office rings a lot. But when people call these days, it’s most often not to ask what the cows are fed, or if they’re […]

The writer joins a group of scientists on a shark tagging expedition in the Bahamas: “Hammerschlag, 34, spends nearly every weekend out on the water in South Florida, armed with hooks, lines, and tags. As a result, he is intimately acquainted with the limits of current technology; most tags, he says, are too expensive and […]

[Fiction] An unlikely symbiosis between an alien race and humans as viewed through a single multispecies family: “T’Gatoi was hounded on the outside. Her people wanted more of us made available. Only she and her political faction stood between us and the hordes who did not understand why there was a Preserve – why any […]

Today’s guest pick comes from Christian Lorentzen, editor for the London Review of Books.

On identity, self-mythology, and Biggie Smalls: “Hip-hop has always been a sort of test kitchen for the art of self-mythology. Maybe because execs force artists into adapting personas that play to some tired trope that consumers recognize, but there is nary a given name or suburban softy in the bunch. Every practitioner has invented an […]

[Fiction] A man reaches out to the woman who lives above him: “Peter was an agoraphobic. He couldn’t tell you what that was a year ago, but he could describe to you now what it feels like to stand by the front door and feel the heat radiate off of the knob, so sure it […]

Zimbabwean activists are fighting against the violence and oppression their country has felt under president Robert Mugabe, who was named Foreign Policy’s “second worst dictator in the world,” after North Korea’s late leader Kim Jong Il: “Mazvarira was abducted in 2000 from her home in Chivhu, a small town south of Harare, and raped by […]

Longreads presents: A collection of stories awarded the Pulitzer, including The New York Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune and more.

An investigation into the abysmal state of child care in the United States: “All too often, it takes an incident to force a closure. Last November, for instance, DFPS closed a center after a caregiver left a nine-month-old infant alone on a changing table without a belt. The baby fell onto a concrete floor, sustaining […]