In this edition: metal medicine, hyped humanoids, carnival crossroads, divine defiance, and optimization obsession.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we are sharing stories from Thomas Hale, Sam Edwards, Kim Cross, Jaq Evans, and Matti Friedman
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories from Charlotte Bailey, Hanif Abdurraqib, Taylar Dawn Stagnar, Patrick Madden, and Kevin Chroust.
My Grandmother’s Dark Secret
The music emanating from a storefront church in Brooklyn was a death knell: Once my grandmother heard it, her childhood was over.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories by Christina Cooke, Tim Neville, Nate Rogers, Linda Kinstler, and Sandra Beasley.
National Nightmare
An essay about the terrifying funhouse that is Washington, D.C., in the age of Trump, QAnon, and insurrection: Even while conspiracy or paranoia bring the truth of mainstream accounts into question, their main effect is to simplify, not to obscure; to add meaning where there is none, to imagine particles where there may or may […]
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.
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Aymann Ismail
The Slate writer and Becoming Baba author reflects on Newark and mosques as home, making sense of Egypt on long flights, and becoming a father.
The Good Catholics of Buffalo
With thousands of US soldiers dying in Vietnam, a righteous group of young New Yorkers embarked on a secret mission to bring the war machine to its knees.
‘You Got Up and You Died’
The trial for the men accused of attacking the Bataclan theater and other sites in Paris in November 2015, leaving 130 people dead, is only the thirteenth trial in French history in which records can be made of the proceedings. Author Madeleine Schwartz shares her notes from attending the trial, in which there are some […]


