Featuring stories from Paul Kix, Matthieu Aikins, Matt Alt, Elisa Gabbert, and Sophie Elmhirst.
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“I Was at a Loss for Any Facts that Would Actually Stick”: An Investigative Reporter on Losing His Mom to QAnon
At BuzzFeed News, Albert Samaha describes his effort to save his mom from QAnon.
Why did the FBI Betray Billy Reilly?
How FBI silence and stonewalling forced William and Theresa Reilly to travel to Russia to find out what happened to their son.
Remembering, Forgetting, and The Week’s Top 5
Two brand new essays and The Weekly Top 5.
A New Series, An Unknown History, and the Week’s top 5
“Minstrelsy shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing—the thing you can see most vividly—while something else works behind the scenes. That something is something only those who are tapped into a specific kind of pain, a specific kind of quest for freedom that has failed before but is not worth abandoning, might understand.” […]
A Colorful Addition and the Week’s Top 5
“Humans are besotted with color and we always have been. We love it so much we will breathe it, eat it, drink it, and look at it until our eyes roll back in our heads. We will paint with it, paint the world with it, paint ourselves with it. We will go to the ends […]
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Elisa Gabbert
The author of Any Person Is the Only Self and recent Guggenheim fellow talks about the worst time of day, the value of wasting an hour, and chilaquiles.
A Q&A with Julian Brave NoiseCat, a Journey Into a Fabled Forest, and Our Top 5
We learn a lot as we move along; if we’re lucky, we might shed some old wisdom for better understanding.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
War stories, new colors, and the joy in getting hands on in art and gardening.
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.


