Taylor Wilson, Nuclear Boy Genius

Taylor Wilson built a working nuclear fusion reactor in his parents’ garage when he was 14. Seven years and two TED talks later, Taylor is working on a hi-tech business empire and ways to intercept dirty bombs—all at the ripe old age of 21.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jun 20, 2015
Length: 12 minutes (3,147 words)

‘Star Wars’ Strikes Back: Behind the Scenes of the Biggest Movie of the Year

Terrific Brian Hiatt feature on ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens,’ including profiles of the new stars, and interviews with Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher on their own complicated feelings about the franchise.

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Dec 3, 2015
Length: 29 minutes (7,435 words)

What It Feels Like to Cover Gun Violence in America

Mascia, a writer at The Trace, a nonprofit media organization focused on guns in the U.S., discusses her work and gun violence in her own family.

Source: Vogue
Published: Dec 2, 2015
Length: 10 minutes (2,557 words)

Claimed

After Fidel Castro took power in 1959 he nationalized the Cuban economy, seizing a wide variety of assets, including sugar mills, power plants, and hotels. Some of these assets belonged to American citizens doing business in Cuba. Seth Stevenson traces the strange history of these contested holdings, which have grown to a collective worth of roughly $8 billion, and questions how they will affect future relations between the two countries.

Source: Slate
Published: Nov 30, 2015
Length: 22 minutes (5,703 words)

Princesses, Slaves, and Explosives: The Scandalous Origin of Vaccines

A look into the colorful and globe-hopping history of inoculation.

Source: Gizmodo
Published: Nov 18, 2015
Length: 12 minutes (3,038 words)

Teach Yourself Italian

Jhumpa Lahiri on language, transformation, and learning to write in Italian.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 30, 2015
Length: 19 minutes (4,938 words)

Longreads Best of 2015: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year

All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2015. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.

Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 1, 2015

The Race to Create Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Heats Up

Two years after Musk sketched out his idea and gave it away, a handful of companies are vying to make it a reality.

Published: Dec 1, 2015
Length: 13 minutes (3,382 words)

Borders: A Reading List

“In this list, I stuck to geography: islands bursting out of the sea, a property feud gone horribly wrong, the billions of dollars backing border control in the American South, and the American South itself.”

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 30, 2015

The Search

Mariette Williams was adopted from Haiti in 1986. Three decades later, she finds her birth family—and serious questions about Haitian adoptions.

Author: Ben Fox
Published: Nov 27, 2015
Length: 12 minutes (3,033 words)