Featuring stories from Paul Kix, Matthieu Aikins, Matt Alt, Elisa Gabbert, and Sophie Elmhirst.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Rachel Aviv, Clare Gerada, Fatima Syed, Leslie Jamison, and Deb Olin Unferth.
Up, Up, and Away to the Week’s Top 5
“Wallace was a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants sort. A 54-year-old Massachusetts lawyer and real estate developer, he couldn’t afford to fly conservatively. Gas ballooning, similar to jockeyship, favored lightweight pilots, who could stock their baskets with more sand. Compared with his slighter opponents, Wallace’s six-foot-five, 240-pound frame meant that the equivalent of three additional 30-pound bags of sand […]
The Value of Revival
“Aaron somehow hailed a taxi. My brother was staining the pavement crimson, but this cab driver, this stranger, stopped. He helped Aaron carry my brother to the cab’s back seat. He surely lost money later that night while toweling blood from cushion crevices.” Did you know that more than one-third of web pages that existed […]
Ten Outstanding Stories to Read in 2023
Ten hand-picked short stories to kick off your year in reading.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Jason Fagone, Shannon Gormley, Nickole Brown, Jason Kehe, and Abe Streep.
How the 1% Runs an Ironman
“Inside the world of Ironman XC, which makes the endurance contest a little more endurable — for executives who can afford to pay.”
Archives of Our Own: A Reading List on Fandom & Community
Fandom gets at our most human urges: to share the things we love with others, to seek community among like-minded peers, especially at a time when we are all still too far apart.
Stories on Shady Science (and Our Top 5)
“On one hand, it’s critical to root out research fraud and serious errors. On the other hand, highlighting the most dramatic outliers risks creating the impression that science as a whole can’t be trusted.” When I told my 7-year-old daughter that the recent viral clip of bunnies jumping on a trampoline was fake, she looked […]
What Are Memories, Anyway?
The brain is a funny thing. You give it the right cues of depth and immersion, and something that would otherwise be a memory of an image becomes a memory of an experience.


