On why we might want to embrace friction and our recent editor’s picks.
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The Dystopian Underworld of South Africa’s Illegal Gold Mines
“When the country’s mining industry collapsed, a criminal economy grew in its place, with thousands of men climbing into some of the deepest shafts in the world, searching for leftover gold.”
Living Through India’s Next-Level Heat Wave
India is experiencing an unprecedented heat wave. Dhruv Khullar describes what living and working in the extreme heat feels like, especially for the country’s poorest residents in and around Delhi. The women described headaches, exhaustion, dizziness, rashes, fever. The stench of the landfill—an acrid mixture of excrement and rotting trash—was sickening, they said, but the […]
The Plot Thickens (and the Week’s Top 5)
“Accommodating the dead, like accommodating the living, has always entailed a head-on collision with the awkward reality that we have a finite amount of physical space.” Okay, yes, sure, maybe you weren’t expecting a quote about dead bodies to kick off your Friday morning. But I assure you that our new feature, “Disneyland of the […]
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.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Wright Thompson, Mitch Moxley, Patrick Radden Keefe, Joshua Sokol, and Ariane Todes.
Best of 2022: Features
As part of Best of Longreads, our annual labor of love, we pored over all the stories we’ve picked in 2022 to create these year-end lists. The following features all embody the strong voice and excellent writing that made us fall in love with narrative journalism. Sweeping, hard-hitting, and emotional, each immerses us in a […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend notable features and essays by Jason Fagone and Alexandria Bordas, Jennifer Senior, Lachlan Summers, Lupita Limón Corrales, and Anna Wiener.


