Every story changes our mind in some small way. They’re already in implicit conversation with one another, and our “Year in Reading” series acknowledges that.
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Posted inFeature
Best of 2024: Our Most Popular Stories of the Year
Our 10 most-read Longreads essays of 2024.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Great French Fry Mystery
“When an A&W takeout bag appeared on my neighbour’s porch in the middle of the night—followed by another, then another—I became obsessed with solving a fast food whodunit that was as baffling as it was beguiling.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
An Exclusive Look Inside the Largest Effort Ever Mounted to Keep the Great Barrier Reef Alive
“Australia is doing absolutely everything to protect its most iconic ecosystem — except, perhaps, the one thing that really matters.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
My All-Nighter in a Vanishing World: the 24-Hour Diner
“New York may be losing its identity as the city that doesn’t sleep, but the motley guests at Kellogg’s Diner show the spirit is still wide awake.”
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: Bezos, paper, scissors; feast or famine; one reason to stay here; any way you slice it; the real Winter Olympics, and more.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Societies Morph With the Seasons
“An evolutionary anthropologist details seasonal changes among foraging communities—and distills how the fixed political structures of industrialized societies are an outlier in human history.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
I Spent Three Years Inhaling Tacos and Corn Dogs in Eating Contests. Here’s Why I Stopped.
“The first time I entered an eating contest, I made a little girl cry.”
Posted inUncategorized
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.” […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Life and Death at the County Fair
“During annual pilgrimages to my hometown carnival, I never fail to find meaning among the doughnut burgers, feather boas, and iridescent dragons.”
