With Alfred, you no longer have to open the door for the Instacart delivery: A worker comes into your apartment and stocks food in your fridge. You don’t hand off your dirty undies to a Washio messenger; Alfred puts the laundered undies in the drawer. This all happens by paying your Alfred $99 a month, […]
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Who Gets to Be a Genius? A Reading List
Why does it often take decades, even centuries, for work by women to be “discovered” and appreciated?
A Stranger in the World: The Memoir of a Musician on Tour
The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay on DIY touring in the punk underground of the former Soviet Union.
The Magic of Archives: A Reading List
Stories about the importance and changing role of archiving—an oft-misunderstood or overlooked science.
By the Reflection of What Is
On the aesthetics, performance, and “majestic wrath” of Frederick Douglass, the most-photographed American of the nineteenth century.
Syracuse Transcript
THE MAN IN THE SHELL (OR CASE, DEPENDING ON WHICH TRANSLATION YOU READ, BUT IT IS KIND OF INTERESTING HOW “SHELL” AND “CASE” MEAN ROUGHLY THE SAME THING IN RUSSIAN, APPARENTLY) So here are three frame stories, linked by various recurring characters. The first one opens with two men, one inside the barn, one outside; […]
Longreads Best of 2015: Investigative Reporting
The best in investigative reporting.
On Female Friendship and the Sisters We Choose for Ourselves
Essayist Chloe Caldwell on the “sisters” we choose for ourselves, and her close relationship with her surrogate younger sister, Cheryl Strayed’s daughter Bobbi.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week, featuring, Backchannel, The New Yorker, Boom, GQ, and the Washingtonian.
‘See What Y’All Can Work Out’: The State of Empathy in Charleston
Charleston’s—and our nation’s—systemic racism, through the lens of the Dylann Roof trial.

