A filmmaker was producing a documentary series on the Iran hostage crisis. Then her father went missing overseas.
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A Couple’s Awakening and the Week’s Top 5
“Both marriage and religion had required exile from ourselves, a systematic suppression of our true identities. It was an adaptation that felt necessary for survival. But as I watched D explore, interrogate, and reinvent womanhood, changing the rules before my eyes, I wondered if I had been wrong.” Happy Friday, even if (in the Northern […]
What the Hole Is Going On?
Rachel Handler investigates the bucatini shortage of 2020.
Best of 2025: All Our Number One Story Picks
Every story we selected for the number one slot in our weekly newsletter, all in one place.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Pieces from Benji Jones, Howard Bryant, Carey Baraka, Sally Jenkins, and Jeannette Cooperman.
By All Measures
Our problems are too vast, our distance from them too great. How do we navigate our derangement of scale?
Seeding the Ocean: Inside a Michelin-Starred Chef’s Revolutionary Quest to Harvest Rice From the Sea
Can eelgrass — and the innovation of Spanish chef Ángel León — change the way we feed the world?
Children of War
As Russia invaded Ukraine, three women from the same family became pregnant at the same time. Then the war tore them apart.
Happy Birthday to Us, and the Week’s Top 5
“The anxiety of hunger settled under my ribs like the feeling you get when you’re about to burst into tears. The hum of the refrigerator alone was enough to make me want to bury my head in the backyard. I often dreamt of donuts, and once, of my sister-in-law’s mother, a tenacious Serbian woman, bringing […]
What We Remember: A Reading List on Archives
Why do we keep what we keep — and who decides? An archivist digs and collects longreads on how objects and materials shape public memory.


