The crisis in neighbouring Ukraine has rattled Alexander Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime. But with the opposition in retreat and the media silenced, can Belarus escape his grip? In the pantheon of great dictators, Lukashenko is a curiosity. The man known as ‘Batka’ (father of the nation) leads the country’s absurd TV news night after night, whether […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Life, After
TV reporter Miles O’Brien’s first-person account of what it’s like to lose your arm: I’d always heard amputees talk about the stares and the acute awareness of being viewed as different. During my first shoot for the NewsHour with one arm, I was wearing a blazer when I met a researcher I was to interview. […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Miss American Dream
How Britney Spears went to Vegas and became a feminist role model. No, really. Fifty stories above all this, Britney Spears was working. She didn’t know about the wind or the dancers or the fire-breather or about the old lady whose day she had fucked up immeasurably, the one who might be the Queen of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
The Man Who Became Big Bird
An interview with Caroll Spinney, who, at 81, has worked at “Sesame Street” as the puppeteer behind Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for 45 years.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
Interview: Kiera Feldman on Oral Roberts, God and Journalism
In our latest Longreads Exclusive, Kiera Feldman and Tulsa-based magazine This Land Press went deep into the downfall of the Oral Roberts family dynasty—how Richard Roberts went from heir to the televangelist’s empire, to stripped from his role at Oral Roberts University. Feldman, a Brooklyn-based journalist, and This Land Press have worked together before—her story […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Joan Rivers: 1933-2014
Joan Rivers, comedy legend, has died at age 81. Three stories from the Longreads Archive: The Fresh Air Interview: Joan Rivers (Terry Gross, NPR) GROSS: So, like, that’s kind of a paradox to me that you live to be on stage and at the same time, there’s this dread of being on stage. Ms. RIVERS: […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Comedy and the Single Girl
An excerpt from Armstrong’s book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, on how Treva Silverman helped create TV’s most memorable characters: One night in 1964, Silverman was playing at a piano bar in Manhattan’s theater district—it was another one of those dark, smoky places, but this one had a well-tuned baby grand. She took […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
The Art of Running from the Police
A young man concerned that the police will take him into custody comes to see danger and risk in the mundane doings of everyday life. To survive outside prison, he learns to hesitate when others walk casually forward, to see what others fail to notice, to fear what others trust or take for granted.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
How Karina Longworth Is Reimagining Classic Hollywood—and the Podcast—in ‘You Must Remember This’
“I have consciously tried to refocus my attention away from being a film critic and toward being a film historian.”
