As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.
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They Played Football as Children. Now Their Families Mourn.
They gave up the game after high school, but the damage seemingly was already done. Now, their families mourn and look for answers.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we have stories from Sarah Miller, James D. Walsh, Hanif Abdurraqib, Gabrielle Drolet, and Jeremiah David.
‘State-Sanctioned Violence:’ Inside One of the Thousands of Schools That Still Paddle Students
According to an analysis by The Hechinger Report, 150 schools in eight states across the U.S. used corporal punishment, or a form of physical pain, on 20% or more of their students that year. Sixty-nine of those schools, such as Collins Elementary School, are in Mississippi. Tara Garcia Mathewson investigates how and why this practice […]
Escaping China with a Spoon and a Rusty Nail
“I never imagined that I would stay there for three years and eight months, from the ages of 16 to 19.”
Slavery Reparations Are Coming
“A historic global movement gains power in Barbados.”
The Ones We Sent Away
“It is extraordinary what we hide from ourselves—and even more extraordinary that we once hid her, my mother’s sister, and so many like her from everyone.”
Slave Money Paved the Streets. Now This Posh RI City Strives to Teach Its Past.
Between 1700-1850, the city of Newport in tiny Rhode Island launched more slave trading voyages than anywhere in North America. And in a time when conservative school boards and state leaders around the U.S. are banning lessons about race and racism in schools, Newport is confronting its past: teaching students local Black history, African heritage, […]
It’s So Sublime, and Our Top 5
“When I listened, I didn’t know if it was something I entered, or something that entered me. If it was within me or if it was me. Do you remember being 16 and loving a song? Of course you do. It felt like that. It felt like everything.” This week, we’re featuring “On (the) Sublime,” […]
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Rebecca Solnit
The author of The Beginning Comes After the End talks about jackrabbits, her own “informational hypervigilance,” and the one word she won’t stop using.


