“Douglas Randall Smith would have you believe he’s on the verge of a medical breakthrough that could end the opioid epidemic and keep millions of people alive.”
Search results
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Jeremy Redmon, Alex Perry, Jeremy D. Larson, Kevin Nguyen, and Egill Bjarnason.
The Humiliating History of the TSA
“I don’t really recognize the America that exists at a TSA checkpoint. It is overly paranoid, vindictive, and unaccountable to us as citizens.” Since 9/11, there isn’t really evidence that shows the Transportation Security Administration has made air travel any safer for passengers. For The Verge, Darryl Campbell dives into two decades of unnecessary security check […]
The Great Fiction of AI
Can artificial intelligence write novels? Josh Dzieza looks at how independent authors have begun to experiment with AI writing programs like Sudowrite and Jasper to write their stories faster. The piece explores questions around ethics and authorship, and its design is A+. It requires a strange degree of sympathy with the machine, thinking about the […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend stories by Elizabeth Bruenig, Joshua St.Clair, Tan Tuck Ming, José Vergara, and Eleanor Cummins.
Paging Dr. House: A Medical Mysteries Reading List
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a doctor. Never mind my terrible grades in all things science. Never mind that I decided this in my second year of college, after deciding that the music school that I’d wanted for years wasn’t for me. It was 2006. It was the age of Dr. Gregory […]
The Hustler at the End of the World
In the early days of the pandemic, Hiam Kaplan tried to move massive amounts of PPE for money. But, as Amanda Chicago Lewis writes in this story about supply chain hustling, he found so much more. It’s been a humbling time to be a hustler. After thousands of hours of work, through all his pandemic […]
Frank Smith Was Locked Up for Eight Decades. At 98, What Would It Mean to Be Free?
“Likely the longest-serving prisoner in America, he’s been paroled into a Connecticut nursing home. But he’s still not out.”
Full House, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose
When I was 10 or so, my grandmother came to stay with us for what my parents called “a while.” Longer than a visit, shorter than getting your mail forwarded.
A Storefront For Robots
“The SEO arms race has left Google and the web drowning in garbage text, with customers and businesses flailing to find each other.”


