‘What If We Just Got Out of Nature’s Way?’ By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Instead of building seawalls or raising the land to prepare for rising sea levels, California’s Imperial Beach is considering moving the town a few blocks back from the ocean.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee By Longreads Feature “Our cultures are not dead and our civilizations have not been destroyed. Our present tense is evolving as rapidly and creatively as everyone else’s.”
Traveling While Black Across the Atlantic Ocean By Ethelene Whitmire Feature Following in the footsteps of African Americans traveling to Denmark in the early 20th century, Ethelene Whitmire experiences a 21st century transatlantic crossing.
When You Race Across Antarctica, Remember Your Spare Skis By Krista Stevens Highlight “They would face wind chill temperatures in the neighborhood of minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit, whiteout days with little visibility, unseasonable snowfall, isolation and pain.”
When Black Male Singers Were Sex Symbols By Ericka Blount Danois Feature Teddy Pendergrass was the R&B singer women wanted and who men wanted to be. And the one whose life-sized cardboard cutout stood in one family’s living room.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Tiffany Stanley, Raj Telhan, Alex Pareene, Nico Muhly, and Chris Heath.
Motherhood: ‘Thank God I think I love it??’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “We are experts in our own lives, but ignored by the world at large.”
The Gift Economy By Joanne Solomon Feature In the desert at Burning Man, Joanne Solomon dissects the implicit transaction that defines her cross-cultural love affair.
‘Rhyming Was No Longer a Symptom, But a Cure’: From Stroke Survivor to Rap Legend By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight For stroke survivor Sherman Hershfield, rapping and rhyming kept his seizures under control.
Fruitland By Steven Kurutz Feature Privately made records enjoy a cult following among collectors, but few are as legendary as Donnie and Joe Emerson’s 1979 LP Dreamin’ Wild.
Musicians Come Clean on How They Live, Create, and Thrive While Sober By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Chris Heath at GQ interviews nine sober musicians on thriving creatively.
Of Blackness and ‘Beauty’ By Morgan Jerkins Feature At an art exhibit exploring black models through Western art, Morgan Jerkins finds historical evidence of the white supremacist definitions of beauty Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom identifies in ‘Thick: and Other Essays.’
Our Understanding of Sun Exposure and Health Keeps Evolving By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Who would have thought scientists would ever compare wearing sunscreen to smoking cigarettes? At Outside magazine, Rowan Jacobsen explores.
‘She changed my heart. And that changed my mind.’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “There was so much I could have given her, but it pales in comparison to what she gave me.”
The Silence of Women By Longreads Feature Women who spoke too angrily or too publicly were punished in cruel and unusual ways.
Why Murder-Suicide is on the Rise Among the Elderly By Krista Stevens Highlight “He thought he could live with the punishment of grief—he had done what his wife had asked—but the punishment of the law would be another matter.” Ann Neumann investigates why mercy killings and murder-suicides are on the rise.
Tommy Tomlinson: The Weight I Carry By Krista Stevens Highlight “On top of all that, some of us fight holes in our souls that a boxcar of donuts couldn’t fill.” Tommy Tomlinson shares the physical and emotional costs of weighing 460 pounds.
At Risk, at Home and Abroad By Joy Notoma Feature As Joy Notoma grapples with uterine fibroids, harmful biases in the medical establishment, and a move from Brooklyn to West Africa she wonders where, as a black woman, she can find safety.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Tressie McMillan Cottom, Kashmir Hill, R.O. Kwon, Jaime Lowe, and Steve Edwards.
The Laws of the Awards Podium Protest By Soraya Roberts Feature Stars are increasingly using Hollywood awards podiums as sites of protest, but few of them are men, and even fewer are white men.
“Welcome to the House of Horrors”: When IP Address Mapping Goes Wrong By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight John and his mother Ann, who live in a house in Pretoria, South Africa, were two victims of faulty IP address mapping — and the U.S. government played a big role in the mess.
Blackstars By Michael Gonzales Feature Michael Gonzales reflects on the deaths of a dear friend, and a bookworm he idolized: David Bowie.
A History of American Protest Music: Come By Here By Tom Maxwell Feature How cultural appropriation and erasure turned an African American spiritual into a white campfire sing-along.
On Alcoholism, Sobriety, and Running Toward a Future By Krista Stevens Highlight “…no one sober knows if they’re going to be sober forever. It was a forgiving moment, and it humbled me.”
The Thrill (and the Heavy Emotional Burden) of Blazing a Trail for Black Women Journalists By Longreads Feature Dorothy Butler Gilliam remembers how exciting it was to integrate The Washington Post, but also how lonely — and often attacked — she felt as the first black woman reporter in the newsroom.
Land Not Theirs By Madison Davis Feature Reckoning with a religious upbringing means confronting religion’s role in oppressing women and people of color.
On the Books We Choose and Those We Don’t By Krista Stevens Highlight “All the people you could have been had you chosen differently—they haunt the bookstore alongside the person you became and could still become.”
The Promise of Passive Income from Amazon: Too Good To Be True? By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Two self-proclaimed “Amazon coaches” say they can train you in their business models so you can make thousands of dollars reselling cheap Chinese products on the world’s largest ecommerce store.
In My Own Voice, Redefining Success and Failure By Lauren DePino Feature Lauren DePino looks back at her ambitions as a singer, and re-evaluates the rejections she once allowed to define her.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Kavitha Surana and Hannah Dreier, Garrett M. Graff, Dani Shapiro, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and Lauren Hough.
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