The latest in SI‘s “Where Are They Now?” series covers longtime staffer Smith, arguably one of the finest profilers the journalism world has ever known. His portraits of Mike Tyson, Andre Agassi, and other icons cut through the insularity of sports fandom to become the stuff of magazine legend. Now, Joseph Bien-Kahn heads to South […]
journalism
Posted inNonfiction
How Vladimir Putin Helped ‘Nazify’ Modern Germany
Rainer Sonntag was a far-right vigilante. He was also a Communist spy.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Plane of Monkeys, a Pandemic, and a Botched Deal: Inside the Science Crisis You’ve Never Heard Of
“Experts say there’s a dire shortage of primates for biomedical research—and it’s putting human lives at risk.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Loans Got Me Into Journalism. Student Debt Pushed Me Out.
Carrington J. Tatum, a first-generation college graduate who’s passionate about reporting that makes a real difference in the lives of marginalized people, decided to walk away from journalism because of his student loan debt. My journalism degree was more expensive than my wealthier classmates’ degrees because I couldn’t afford to pay in cash. But that’s […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
Behind the Story: Mailee Osten-Tan on Reporting on Gender Confirmation Surgery in Thailand
Mailee Osten-Tan on learning how to be a better ally to the members of marginalized communities and what she discovered while reporting on trans healthcare issues for Longreads.
Posted inFeature
Finding a Path in a Broken System
Thailand is a top destination for gender confirmation surgery. Its success is a symptom of Western failure.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Notes from Lviv
In a series of diary-like dispatches, Matt Gallagher shares a riveting on-the-ground account of training civilians for combat in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. All-day lane rotations between trainers on urban movement, dismounted recon ops, and advanced room defense. They’re getting better. Petro’s a leader. So is Symon, the law student. So is Ivan, a […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Death Spiral of an American Family
In this heartbreaking portrait of one American family, Eli Saslow offers a look at “backwards mobility” and the country’s collapsing middle class. It had been almost a month since Dave, 39, found his father lying unresponsive in bed next to his cellphone and a bill from a collections agency, having died of a heart attack […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Airport
Journalist Shannon Gormley weaves an astonishing narrative and beautifully written (and at times, very personal) meditation on one family’s escape out of Afghanistan as Kabul fell to the Taliban. I’d never written Asghar’s story as I’d said I would, and I’d buried the thought of contacting him, too, until foreign sections of newspapers began to […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Endless Exile: The Tangled Politics Keeping a Uyghur Man in Limbo
Sixteen years after being released from Guantánamo Bay, Ayoob Mohammed is still trying to prove he’s not a terrorist. This powerful, tragic story by Annie Hylton traces an Uyghur man’s journey from northwest China to Guantánamo to Albania — and examines the complex politics that have kept him from joining his family in Canada. As […]