Our 10 most-read Longreads essays of 2025.
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Posted inReading List
Wild Talk: A Reading List On Artificial Intelligence and Interspecies Communication
AI is opening up the possibility of communicating with other animals. But will we listen? And can we ever truly understand?
Posted inEditor's Pick
Tom Junod Finally Reckons with What It Means to Be a Man
“In a long list of classic stories, the legendary magazine writer helped teach readers what masculinity looks like in the 21st century. To write his first book, he had to confront the man who first taught him: his father.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Thank This Retired Projectionist for Those 3 a.m. Odyssey 70-mm. Imax Showings
“A Tennessee native and longtime film projectionist who first started working in Imax theaters in the ’90s, Caldwell has become integral to Imax’s 70-mm. rollouts even as he considers himself mostly retired.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Whose Babies Are These?
“A Chinese man hired a Florida surrogate, then didn’t pick up his kids, sparking a custody battle that could upend the industry.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Missing Pages
“Sixty years after the Cultural Revolution began, a writer looks back to her childhood in Beijing during its peak, and the banned books that sustained her through the tumult.”
Posted inFeature
Love Song to Costco
“In the great halls of Costco, two of our greatest fears are assuaged — that of not having enough, and that of not being enough.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
In the Wake of the Water
“Federal flood-risk maps — which millions of homeowners rely on to make decisions about the future of their homes — aren’t accounting for climate change in their projections. The result? Risk models that systematically underestimate threats facing residents of flood-prone areas across the U.S.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Strangers Rent My Home, Sleep in My Bed, Play My Guitar
“Is it suffering? Is it just a sign of the times?”
