‘Our culture has become obsessed with “blue zones,” where people purportedly live longer. But does the underlying research stand up to scrutiny?”
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories from Ivy Knight; David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg; Eva Holland; John DeVore; and Nathaniel Rich.
The Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave
“Beatriz Flamini liked to be alone so much that she decided to live underground—and pursue a world record. The experience was gruelling and surreal.”
The Price of Remission
“When I was diagnosed with cancer, I set out to understand why a single pill of Revlimid cost the same as a new iPhone. I’ve covered high drug prices as a reporter for years. What I discovered shocked even me.”
The Inside Job
“Robert Konashewych was a young police officer with expensive tastes, two girlfriends and a mountain of debt. Heinz Sommerfeld was recently deceased with a large unclaimed estate. Problem, meet solution.”
Chrishona Hodges’s Life Sentence
“At a crossroads when Chicago profiled him nine years ago, Jerryon Stevens is now in jail, awaiting trial on a murder charge. At home, his mother reckons with her son’s path — and tries to hold her fractured family together.”
That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.
“Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called ‘sludge.'”
A New Series, An Unknown History, and the Week’s top 5
“Minstrelsy shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing—the thing you can see most vividly—while something else works behind the scenes. That something is something only those who are tapped into a specific kind of pain, a specific kind of quest for freedom that has failed before but is not worth abandoning, might understand.” […]
Best of 2024: All Our Number One Story Picks
Every story that appeared in the number one slot in our Weekly Top 5, all in one place.
Full House, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose
When I was 10 or so, my grandmother came to stay with us for what my parents called “a while.” Longer than a visit, shorter than getting your mail forwarded.


