The Way We Treat Our Pets Is More Paleolithic Than Medieval By Longreads Feature Hunter-gatherers tended to think of pets as part of the family, and so do we. But in other time periods, intimacy with animals has been more taboo.
The Great Online School Scam By Longreads Feature Students are performing worse than ever, but private companies are making millions.
Blockchain Just Isn’t As Radical As You Want It To Be By Longreads Feature On how a new administrative technology is being conflated with radical politics.
How Lobbyists Normalized the Use of Chemical Weapons on American Civilians By Longreads Feature Or, how we learned to stop worrying and love the gas.
The Thing about Women from the River Is That Our Currents Are Endless By Aaron Gilbreath Feature Given a journal while hospitalized, Terese Marie Mailhot writes her way through generations of trauma.
Living Differently: How the Feminist Utopia Is Something You Have to Be Doing Now By Longreads Feature Lynne Segal points out that if the dystopia is already here, then the utopia must be here too.
The RNC, Revisited By Longreads Feature Last year, when Jared Yates Sexton went to Cleveland, the ugliness he saw there was a harbinger of much to come.
How Does It Feel? An Alternative American History, Told With Folk Music By Longreads Feature On Guthrie, Robeson, Seeger, Lomax, Dylan, the Red Scare, the fall of labor, and what folk music had to do with it.
We Should Be Talking About the Effect of Climate Change on Cities By Longreads Feature But we’re not. Instead, the effects on cities tend to be edited out or statistically minimized.
Is the Internet Changing Time? By Longreads Feature “Fragments of the past are for the first time on tap, not stored away in boxes,” writes Laurence Scott.
A High-End Mover Dishes on Truckstop Hierarchy, Rich People, and Moby Dick By Longreads Feature On the beauty and burdens of the long haul.
How a Journalist Uncovered the True Identity of Jihadi John By Longreads Feature Souad Mekhennet’s thrilling tale of late-night rendezvous, burner phones, and secret codes — and her quest to reveal the man in black.
The War on Drugs Is a War on Women of Color By Longreads Feature Women of color are disproportionately targeted by the war on drugs and broken windows policing.
Late in Life, Thoreau Became a Serious Darwinist By Longreads Feature But he died before he could finish his book on natural history. As Emerson put it, Thoreau “depart[ed] out of Nature before… he has been really shown to his peers for what he is.”
A Portrait of the Artist as an Undocumented Immigrant By Longreads Feature A Mexican writer recalls undocumented life at a restaurant in New York and as a nanny in Connecticut.
A Sociology of the Smartphone By Longreads Feature Smartphones have altered the texture of everyday life, digesting many longstanding spaces and rituals, and transforming others beyond recognition.
Chasing the Harvest: ‘It Used to Be Only Men That Did This Job’ By Gabriel Thompson Feature In this oral history, a produce truck driver and former lettuce worker recounts the sexual harassment she faced while working in the fields of Salinas Valley, California.
At War With the Rat Army By Longreads Feature A refugee from Nazi Germany has trouble adjusting to life in America, so she decamps to the countryside, where she discovers that the war follows you in unexpected ways.
Chasing the Harvest: ‘If You Want to Die, Stay at the Ranch’ By Gabriel Thompson Feature In this oral history, a former sheepherder describes the loneliness and medical hardship he experienced while tending sheep in California’s Central Valley.
Considering the Wall By Longreads Feature Hadrian’s Wall, that is. Max Adams explores Britain’s lost early medieval past by walking its ancient paths.
The Slave Who Outwitted George Washington By Michelle Legro Feature Ona Judge slipped out of the president’s house one night and didn’t come back. But unlike most runaway slaves, she was never caught.
How David Bowie Came Out As Gay (And What He Meant By It) By Longreads Feature David Bowie came out as gay in an interview with Melody Maker magazine in 1972, and it was the closet door heard ’round the world. But what did he mean by it?
Hello, Lenin? (Berlin, 1997) By Rebecca Schuman Feature When an American exchange student discovered that the Germans never lose anything.
King-Killers in America (and the American Who Avenged the King) By Longreads Feature When Charles II regained the throne, he launched a global manhunt for the judges who had sentenced his father to death.
Becoming One of the World’s 65 Million Refugees By Longreads Feature Majid Hussain keeps having to run.
A Stranger in the World: The Memoir of a Musician on Tour By Longreads Feature The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay on DIY touring in the punk underground of the former Soviet Union.
On Female Friendship and the Sisters We Choose for Ourselves By Chloe Caldwell Feature Essayist Chloe Caldwell on the “sisters” we choose for ourselves, and her close relationship with her surrogate younger sister, Cheryl Strayed’s daughter Bobbi.
How the Brontës Came Out As Women By Dana Snitzky Feature When Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell burst onto the literary scene, everyone wondered who these mysterious men could be—and if they could even really be men.
Mass Extinction: The Early Years By Dana Snitzky Feature A quick rundown of the ecocidal empires that came before us.
A Fish So Coveted People Have Smuggled, Kidnapped, and Killed For It By Longreads Feature The Asian arowana or “dragon fish” is protected by the Endangered Species Act and illegal to own in the U.S. But the tropical fish’s status symbol among wealthy buyers has made it the object of a thriving black market.
