With physical distancing the order of the day as COVID-19 spreads, cultural locales — sites for communal experiences, like museums and theaters — are emptying out. What are we sharing if we’re not sharing these spaces? And were we really sharing them to begin with?

‘“You shouldn’t stay here,” he says, but he gets more frightened as night comes, dreading the long hours of fever and soaking sweats and shivering and terrible aches.’

“Sing Sing was going into quarantine. Our movement was limited. No gym. Hospital and commissary runs limited to groups of ten. Staggered seating in the mess hall.”

For wealthy Americans, a dystopian future includes underground golfing in South Dakota.

Lawrence Wright did it again; Jordan Peterson in a coma?; Myriam Gurba forced out of her job; Woody Allen canceled by his publisher’s employees; THE VIRUS; and more.

One Republican offers a ray of light during these dark times: That this pandemic will end the Trump presidency.

A headline-grabbing murder-for-hire plot helped expose the dark side of exotic animal ownership in the U.S. Is there now enough momentum to reform the industry?

“We didn’t know it yet, but we were living in a kind of laboratory of the country’s future. We were the first.”

Dialogue, Twitter-style: you get called out on social media. People pile on to you. Other people pile on to the pile-oners. Soon everyone’s anxious or angry or both, no one’s really talking (or listening), and a few tech CEOs are buying new houses in Jackson Hole.

We can all quarantine alone, together, in one big villa in the cloud.

New York midwife Elizabeth Catlin faces 95 individual felony counts at her upcoming trial. For what? For doing her job. Politics and patriarchy make the work of many credentialed, experienced midwives illegal — to the detriment of women and underserved communities.

Just read it. And go wash your hands.

He faked an insanity defense, got out, and immediately committed another crime, and this time people are dead. He’s going to plead insanity again.

It’s surprising when stodgy institutions award progressive artists, and surprises, even good ones, are alarming — so we immediately burden the winners with the weight of symbolism.

She gets a mansion and she gets a boat and she gets a jet! And you get to suffer and then maybe pull yourself up by your bootstraps, if you’re lucky enough and bare enough of your private pain.

Competitive sports can mean professional and financial success — if they don’t compromise your mental health first. ‘Cheer’ and ‘Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez’ show how athletics can hurt as much as they can heal.

Cancel culture suggests we can change the world from the outside in, but the misogyny and racism are coming from inside the house.

By protecting ourselves and no one else, we destroy ourselves along with everyone else.

After enormous lobbying efforts, Monsanto’s GMO soybeans, treated with Roundup, became the country’s largest export, as cancer rates and other health issues skyrocketed.

Our last editors’ roundtable of the season, with guest Nick Chrastil.

What we all need to hear right now, with special guest Marisa Siegel, Editor in Chief of The Rumpus.

Canada’s old white publishing institutions are a lesson in what happens when your media industry contracts: journalism no longer serves the reality of the country.

In a fertile valley that boats an $8 billion agricultural economy, the people who work the fields and in processing plants rarely enjoy the economic security that the fields’ corporate owners do.

Editors discuss the gender politics of music criticism, how young womxn drive conversations around cultural figures, institutionalized discrimination in sport, and more.

Longreads editors chat with Internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz about ok boomer, TikTok, patriotism, and more.

Search and rescue teams train for the worst conditions. But the worst conditions are getting worse. Are they ready for the next big disaster?

How Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes debunk news scandals of the past.

Even with the federal government in chaos, there’s still plenty of opportunity to solve a global problem.

On the fate of Deadspin, recent longreads on Airbnb and influencers, and the uncanny canon of Wakefield Press.

A year after the Camp Fire, Tessa Love contemplates home, California’s undoing, and what it means to belong.