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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: metal medicine, hyped humanoids, carnival crossroads, divine defiance, and optimization obsession.
Best Of 2023: Features
At the time of this writing, Longreads editors have created nearly 650 recommendations in 2023, and just about every one of them can be considered a feature. However, you’ll find that the stories contained herein are features in the classic sense: marriages of deep reporting and indelible prose. Some are light, others emotionally taxing. Their […]
The Secret Door
“When we read, we make believe. We aren’t duped or ensorcelled. Deep down we decide. We make ourselves believe.”
The Uncanniest Valley (and the Rest of Our Top 5)
In this edition: Concrete memories, grief science, captive cats, relentless pain, and myth meets reality.
A Year in Reading and Our Top 5
“Some of my favorite stories this year have made me more open to new outlooks and solutions for restoring and supporting the earth. They challenge me to pay more attention to the natural world, and to remember that we’re all connected, even to the tiniest and simplest forms of life.” “One observation on its own […]
Album as Poem, List as Confession, and Our Top 5
We may often think of poetry as something formal or grand, or meant for the pages of a book. But these two essays remind us that poetry lives in many places.
20 Years Later: Little Brother, “The Minstrel Show”
Like minstrelsy, Little Brother’s album shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing, while something else works behind the scenes.
Knotty Business: A Delightfully Tangled Reading List on Knots
Six stories on our fascination with knots.
Wild Talk: A Reading List On Artificial Intelligence and Interspecies Communication
AI is opening up the possibility of communicating with other animals. But will we listen? And can we ever truly understand?


