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• 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."

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• 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."

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• Krista Stevens

Librarians on Horseback

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

Longreads Valid
• 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."

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• 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 Valid
• 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."

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• Krista Stevens

Hard Rain

"The battle over weather modification."

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• Jenny Odell

Living in an Alive World

A triptych shows images of a forest floor with mushrooms rising, a singing bird, and a cloudy sky. Each image has a square around it, as though to focus the attention of the viewer on something discrete.
Soft eyes, deep listening, and other ways to extend human perception beyond our limits.

Longreads Valid
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Darde Ghorbat

"The pain of alienation."

Longreads Valid
• Brendan Fitzgerald

You Must Remember This

"On the nature of autobiographical memory."

Longreads Valid
• Carolyn Wells

What happened to Borat’s village?

Sacha Baron Cohen turned Glod into a punchline.

Longreads Valid
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Are There More Bunnies in Toronto?

"I never used to see rabbits in Toronto. Then they were everywhere. Then I lost my mind."

Longreads Valid
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Why Are Fish So Gay?

"A conversation about finding community in the aquatic."

Longreads Valid
• Brendan Fitzgerald

I Turned Off My Phone for a Month and Used a Landline

"No texts, no Instagram, no subway Slack."

Longreads Valid
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

The Capybaras Aren’t All Right

"The internet’s favorite animal is facing a dark fate."

Longreads Valid
• Olivia Potts

The Grate Cheese Robbery

How organized crimes fell in love with cheese.

Longreads Valid
• Krista Stevens

This Literary AI Scandal Changes Everything

"A magazine’s response to accusations of publishing AI-generated fiction points to a new phase in the struggle to keep literature human."

Longreads Valid
• Peter Rubin

Love Language 

“The undying dream of Esperanto.“

Longreads Valid
• Peter Rubin

Grate Expectations: The Troubled Quest for Tasty Vegan Cheese

“The plant-based boom failed to deliver. But there may yet be hope.”

Longreads Valid
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Short Naps, Long Hours: How Autism Clinics Squeeze Medicaid Dollars Out of Preschoolers

"The industry has grown rapidly, straining state budgets. A focus on finances has led to overbilling, fraud and even harm."

Longreads Valid
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Comparisons as Predictable as the Sunrise

"An analysis of 200,000 similes from popular fiction."

Longreads Valid
• Krista Stevens

I Spent a Week Recording Myself Doing Chores for Money. Who’s the Robot Now?

"Cooking. Doing laundry. Tidying up. All your household tasks can be turned into data to train future humanoids—if you’re prepared for the consequences."

Longreads Valid
• Brendan Fitzgerald

Building an AI Data Center in Pine Island, Minnesota

"I learned about the data center as soon as the scrappy sign was erected. I was thrilled to see something new; my drive hasn’t changed much in three years. I was less thrilled for Pine Island, which has, like many rural Midwestern towns, become an unlikely microcosm of the AI debate."

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• Longreads

Getting Unstuck with Ramona Ausubel

On finding joy in the writing process, embracing friction, and developing your voice.

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• Brendan Fitzgerald

Is Yoko Ono the Most Radical Artist of the Trump Era?

"In the 1960s, she invited an audience to cut off her clothes. As attacks on women’s rights escalate, 'Cut Piece' and other decades-old works of feminist art feel more relevant than ever."

Longreads Valid
• Peter Rubin

The Man Who Reads Books For a Living (One Every Two Days)

"Clarke Seicher is something much more specific and much rarer: a professional book reader who evaluates literature specifically for screen adaptation."

Longreads Valid
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Inside the Shaolin Monastery that Helped Build Victor Wembanyama

"This is the story of how 34 generations of Shaolin warrior history trained a once-in-a-generation NBA superstar."

Longreads Valid
• Seyward Darby

The Wrong Stalker

"He was locked up for a dangerous infatuation. Nothing was as it seemed."

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• Longreads

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

After the flood, twisted roles, the joy of emptiness, data disasters, and family road trips.

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• Longreads

‘Nothing Together’

collage-style graphic of two young men
My brother’s murder and its aftermath.