FeedCity: Longreads

Longreads
11:06 • Carolyn Wells

The True Story Behind the “El Cap Kindergartener” Ascent

"On May 22, a 7-year-old reached the summit of El Capitan. Why are so many climbers upset about it?"

Longreads
10:36 • Courtney E. Martin

Friction: A Reading List on Why Inconvenience Can Be Meaningful

Five stories that explore the risks and rewards of life's little hurdles.

Longreads
20:24 • Cheri Lucas Rowlands

The Last Straw

"Inside the tiny community of English master thatchers, a fight is unfolding over a tradition that may not survive."

Longreads
16:33 • Brendan Fitzgerald

Losing Paradise

"As rising seas swallow Louisiana’s marshes, oil companies are pretending nothing has changed — and that now floatable, fishable waters remain their private property."

Longreads
13:03 • Seyward Darby

The Paperboy’s Secret

"In boyhood, guilt was a constant companion. I stopped mentioning the quarters that Mr. Wood put into my pocket."

Longreads
11:42 • Peter Rubin

Are Memories Transferable — or Edible?

"In the 1960s, worm-training experiments and their strange implications captivated the nation."

Longreads
13:03 • Seyward Darby

The Inside Story of the Athens Music Scene

"How did the college football town spawn the B-52s, R.E.M., and Widespread Panic, to name just a few? The maestros and misfits who led Athens’s rise to one of the world's most influential and improbable music towns tell all."

Longreads
10:12 • Longreads

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Recommending notable stories by Wyatt Williams, John Leland, Jonathan Weiner, Suzy Hansen, and Max Ufberg.

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Longreads
17:21 • Peter Rubin

How Three Chess Friends Battled Demons and Saved Two Lives

"A homeless chess hustler, a scholar and an aging recluse found hope in a trashed apartment by Central Park."

Longreads
15:33 • Brendan Fitzgerald

Art for Our Sakes

"Why should we go on making things?"

Longreads
13:03 • Cheri Lucas Rowlands

How Austin’s Sandlot Baseball Scene Became a Magnet for Indie Rockers, Filmmakers, Designers, and Brands

"If you build it, they will come."

Longreads
11:03 • Carolyn Wells

The Rise and Rise of Balloon Racing’s First Family

"Joe Heartsill and his sons, Rhett and Lucas, are international eminences in a very obscure corner of professional sports."

Longreads
10:09 • Longreads

The Fugitive Childhood of a Cocaine Smuggler’s Daughters

scrapbook-like collage of two images of two girls

"When their parents ripped two young sisters from their privileged lives, gave them fake names, and took them on the lam, they thought it was because their father was in trouble with the IRS. It would be years before they learned the truth about his life of crime."

Longreads
16:03 • Brendan Fitzgerald

Online Trolls Harassed Her Six-Year-Old. That Was Only the Beginning.

"How a group of sports fans at the University of Iowa sparked a clash involving a basketball star, a T-shirt company, and a reporter from halfway across the country."

Longreads
14:33 • Krista Stevens

Librarians on Horseback

"The New Deal project that preserved Kentucky’s recipes."

Longreads
13:09 • Seyward Darby

Made in the USA

"Pete Hegseth is the product of an essentially American ethos—which means we have no choice but to ask what to do with him, and what to do with ourselves."

Longreads
02 Jun 22:24 • Cheri Lucas Rowlands

The Cartoonist Who Mocked the Madness of Modernism

"With biting satire, Alan Dunn captured how 20th-century architectural trends left everyday Americans astonished, baffled, and enraged."

Longreads
02 Jun 19:33 • Seyward Darby

Life With Locked-in Syndrome: ‘Despite Everything, You Are Alive’

"Matt Rudd has remarkable conversations with three Britons who, after life-changing accidents, have fully active minds but cannot move or speak, and can communicate only via the blink of an eye."