“It is hard, I think, to learn as an adult. This is not some profound statement. It just is. But it is not hard because of the fact of it; it is hard because learning anything means learning again how to learn. It’s not that riding a bike is hard; it’s that learning is hard. […]
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Wrapping Up 2024 and the Week’s Top 5
Well, folks, this is it. The last Top 5 newsletter of the year! Whether or not you’re observing any holidays, we hope you enjoy a restorative end to 2024. At the very least, you’ll have the full run of our Best of 2024 package at your disposal—between the stories we discussed in our year-end essays […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week’s edition highlights stories by Skip Hollandsworth, Arielle Isack, J.R. Moehringer, Romina Cenisio, and Daniel Miller.
A Dangerous Solo Hike, the Vanishing of Aging Parents, and Our Top 5
“I came to a shack with a small, white-haired man inside. I assumed he had been guarding Devil’s Bridge for centuries. I answered his riddles three and he gestured for me to sign in. At the end of his hand was a damp pile of papers and a pen on a gray string. Like most […]
Sob Stories, Movie Memes, and the Week’s Top 5
“While crying has featured in some of my most life-defining moments, I can also be set off anywhere, anytime, by almost anything. In the last week alone, I’ve cried looking at a social media account of a husky puppy and older cat (who are best friends), watching a sports documentary about a basketball team I […]
Happy Birthday to Us, and the Week’s Top 5
“The anxiety of hunger settled under my ribs like the feeling you get when you’re about to burst into tears. The hum of the refrigerator alone was enough to make me want to bury my head in the backyard. I often dreamt of donuts, and once, of my sister-in-law’s mother, a tenacious Serbian woman, bringing […]
Brains, Bonobos, and the Top 5 Reads of the Week
“Your doctors tell you that you have your whole life to recover, but also that you have a window of just six months when your brain is most primed to relearn everything you’ve forgotten. So, no pressure. Your brain can’t regenerate the neurons it’s lost. Use ’em or lose ’em. You had no idea your […]
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring s.e. smith
The All My Dead Cats and Other Losses author and Flytrap co-founder on grief, breaking and fixing things, and Alice Wong.
The Legendary Band Who Got the Beat (and Our Top 5)
“They were both powerful images that the bands chose themselves, which subverted the idea of how women should market their music. There was also the idea that the women wanted to conceal themselves, whether with face masks or mud, to keep a part hidden, especially from a music industry that wanted women to reveal themselves, […]
Best of 2022: Reported Essays
Our list of some of the great reported essays published this year includes reads on grief, veganism, the geology of Mexico City, and British real estate.


