“The pill worked like magic, ease spreading through me pleasantly until I felt normal again.”
Search results
Posted inEditor's Pick
Wings, Sweat, and Tears
While it’s not the first in-depth story about the capsaicin-fueled mayhem of YouTube talk show Hot Ones (see: this 2019 Verge story), Jaya Saxena’s piece goes beyond profile to something more like exegesis. We know that Scoville units introduce a candid new wrinkle to the tired celebrity interview; now, the question becomes what to do […]
Posted inNewsletter
Longreads Needs You, Reader
“Stories matter. And in a moment when people so rarely take the time to think before they speak, they matter more than ever.” Hi there, It’s pretty rare for us to send out an email that isn’t our Weekly Top 5 newsletter. In fact, I think the last one was almost a year ago. But […]
Posted inFeature
Fast Times on America’s Slowest Train
A surreal train ride between Chicago and New Orleans proves that Amtrak still has a lot to offer. (Not including speed or the food.)
Posted inEditor's Pick
Who’s Afraid of Spatchcocked Chicken?
“Squeamishness around meat is embedded into the English language — and by extension, Western attitudes towards the realities of meat.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Sizzler: The California Origin Story Behind One of India’s Flashiest Dishes
Whether you’re a fan of culinary cross-pollination or just loaded nachos/fries/[insert substrate here], you’ll leave this gustatory lineage story with a growling stomach. And if you’re lucky enough to live near a place that serves sizzlers? Well, you’ll just have to try to beat me there. About ten minutes after we put in our order, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Milk Money
Reeves Wiederman reports on how the baby-formula shortage in the U.S. created an opportunity for new companies to enter an industry historically dominated by a few corporations. Laura Modi, a Google and Airbnb alum who founded the baby-formula startup Bobbie, is one such CEO hoping to transform an industry “that has grown complacent.” As Modi […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
We’ve Underestimated Sprinkles
I love sprinkles. Always have. And somehow, as Cathy Erway shows in this delightful piece for Taste, the world has caught up to my juvenile palate. Thankfully, she phrases the appeal more artfully: “the nutritionless, mostly flavorless, tiny doodads that mimic absolutely nothing found in nature provide outsize comfort with egalitarian underpinnings. And they aren’t […]
Posted inFeature
Life in the Slow Lane
Olivia Potts | Longreads | November 2022 | 16 minutes (4,649 words) It’s six in the morning, and Robert Booth has already been on the road for three hours. Sitting alongside him in the cab of his lorry (the British term for a truck) is Louis, Robert’s small dog, a Jack Russell-chihuahua mix, and a washing-up bowl […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories by Pamela Colloff, Jasper Craven, Omer Bartov, Judith Sanders, and Lale Arikoglu.
