This week, we’re sharing stories from Tim Alberta, Jane C. Hu, Katy Kelleher, Jimmy Thomson, and David Marchese.
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‘That Girl is Going to Get Herself Killed’
Krista Diamond | Longreads | November 2022 | 16 minutes (4,342 words) In 2012, I was working at a hotel in Glacier National Park when a man I’d just met invited me for a day of tubing and drinking beer on the river. Little did I know, I would nearly drown in the rapids. But […]
How to Really Listen to Music
What happens when we pay music closer attention, rather than treat it like background noise to zone out to? And how do laypeople approach things like rhythm and tone?
Justin Townes Earl: The Saint of Lost Causes
Fellow singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield, who frequently toured with Earle, described his gift more simply: “He was able to explain trouble better than most.”
Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story we selected for the number five slot in our weekly newsletter, in a handy digest.
In Praise of Del Amitri’s Album Waking Hours
Some albums make it hard to separate the music from the experience of listening to it.
The God Phone
What happens when ordinary people play God to strangers? Leora Smith explores the history of one of the oldest art installations at Burning Man and the conversations that unfold there.
Sun Ra: ‘I’m Everything and Nothing’
‘Sun Ra says, “the darkness. Nobody made that. It just happens. Light and all that—someone made that; it’s written that they did. But nobody made the darkness. My music is about dark tradition. Dark tradition means a lot more than black tradition.” On the other, Sun Ra named himself for the sun itself, that roiling […]
Editor’s Roundtable: Climate of the Future, Music of the Past
Longreads editors discuss stories in Miami New Times, The New Yorker, 5280 Magazine, and The Believer.
The Hare Krishnas of Coal Country
The world is full of make-believe. Some of it is sweet, some of it is sick. It persists because we have found no other antidote for pain.

