This week, we’re sharing stories from Laura Nahmias, Victor Luckerson, Arianne Shahvisi, Roberto JosĂ© Andrade Franco, and Apoorva Tadepalli.
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Longreads Best of 2021: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Here’s every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
Fearing for His Life
Ramsey Orta filmed the killing of Eric Garner. The video traveled far, but it wouldn’t get justice for his dead friend. Instead, the NYPD would exact their revenge through targeted harassment and eventually imprisonment — Orta’s punishment for daring to show the world police brutality.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Alec MacGillis, Chloe Cooper Jones, Adam Serwer, Emma Marris, and Mik Awake.
On Flooding: Drowning the Culture in Sameness
Flooding (v.): Unleashing a mass torrent of the same stories by the same storytellers at the same time, making it almost impossible for anyone but the same select few to rise to the surface.
The Day New York Rose Up Against the Nazis On the Hudson
In 1935, a group of New York communists boarded a German luxury liner during a lavish sending-off party attended by celebrities, Rockefellers, and Roosevelts. Their goal: capture the swastika.
United States of Conspiracy: An Interview with Anna Merlan
“Most people in America believe in one conspiracy to some extent, but the far end of the pool … is this desire to show that you really do reject all knowable authority.”
Glass, Pie, Candle, Gun
Before he founded High Times, Tom Forcade was a renegade journalist willing to throw a pie—or a lawsuit—in the face of anyone restricting his constitutional freedoms.
The Blaming of the Shrew
Golden Age antiheroes and the nasty women who humanized them.
Let’s Talk About Sex Scenes
Countless women have been mistreated ever since sex became common on our screens. Hollywood’s newfound awareness of intimacy choreography can help change things.

