Editor’s Pick

It’s one of the most dangerous jobs in the world—working as a deep-sea diver: “Most offshore divers aspire to work saturation jobs (‘Sat is where it’s at,’ says Newsum), but after graduating diving school and passing an extensive physical, a diver must begin as a ‘tender,’ or apprentice diver. A tender will serve on the […]

Small towns like Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, are fighting unwanted development by practicing “municipal disobedience”: “Thus, Sugar Hill became one of dozens of communities nationwide—mostly villages but also the city of Pittsburgh—that have reacted to environmental threats by directly challenging the Constitution and established case law. The leading champion of this confrontational strategy—which has its […]

A look at the culture of playing through your injuries in the NFL: “But when you’re always hurting, how do you know when you’re hurt? “You don’t. Not always, anyway. ‘A lot of times you don’t know exactly when the injury happens, because you’re taking drugs like Toradol or another kind of anti-inflam, so you’re […]

This week’s Longreads Member Exclusive is “Forever Young,” a story by Jason Johnson for the literary video game magazine Kill Screen. Johnson tells us how he first discovered a group of Hungarian developers who have spent more than 20 years developing a game for the Commodore 64:  “This wasn’t supposed to happen. As originally conceived, […]

[Fiction] A woman whose marriage is ending finds a new place to live: “When my marriage fell apart one summer, I had to get out of the little flat in Kentish Town, where I had been first happy and then sad. I arranged to live for a few months in another woman’s house; she agreed […]

A writer goes to Portland, Ore. where the karaoke scene is vibrant and taken seriously: “‘Karaoke in Portland is just different from other places,’ said his friend Bruce Morrison. ‘There’s a lot of showmanship.’ “Mulkern swept his long hair over his shoulders and put his top hat back on. ‘People in Portland,’ he declared, ‘are […]

A look at the families who are not just affected by returning veterans, but display similar symptons: “Brannan and Katie’s teacher have conferenced about Katie’s behavior many times. Brannan’s not surprised she’s picked up overreacting and yelling—you don’t have to be at the Vines residence for too long to hear Caleb hollering from his room, […]

A look at ecologist Bob Paine, whose mentorship has produced a long line of influential scientists throughout his five-decade career: “Soon, Paine’s students were growing up and embarking on careers of their own. Few have spawned as rich a legacy as Jane Lubchenco and Bruce Menge. They met as graduate students in Paine’s lab in […]

How an era of rampant expansion—and sloppy spelling—led to the creation of strange or questionable street names in Las Vegas: “With all this rapid expansion came strange civic issues. As Rothman notes in his book, police officers were given new maps of the city every week. Some of the streets on the map, he points […]

A college football star learns about the death of his grandmother and girlfriend on the same day and has inspirational stories written about him by major media outlets. But there’s a problem: His girlfriend never existed: “There was no Lennay Kekua. Lennay Kekua did not meet Manti Te’o after the Stanford game in 2009. Lennay […]