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Longreads : The best longform stories on the web

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• Brendan Fitzgerald

Ever New

"In Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s music, the present moment is an astonishing, improbable gift."

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• Peter Rubin

Opposable Thumbs

"On cartoons, colors, ferris wheels, Father’s Day, Prince, coming out, the internet, and me."

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• Longreads

Open Season

illustration of two men with hats, one holding a rifle
"Colorado’s San Luis Valley was a wildlife poacher’s paradise. Then an undercover federal agent arrived."

Longreads Valid
• Seyward Darby

What Will It Take to Get AI Out of Schools?

"The tech world assumes that AI-aided education is necessary and inevitable. A growing number of parents, educators, and cognitive scientists say the opposite."

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• Peter Rubin

The Voice That Revealed a Planet

"David Attenborough turned a whisper into one of the most powerful voices in history. At 100, it carries both wonder and warning."

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• Brendan Fitzgerald

Inside the Enhanced Games, Where Athletes Compete on Steroids. And Growth Hormones. And Adderall.

"Most drugs are banned in the world of elite sports, but not here. In this competition—backed by Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr., and Saudi royalty—the athletes are guinea pigs. And if those backers have their way, you’re next."

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• Brendan Fitzgerald

All My Dad’s Sons

"At a very young age, I learned a lot about how life can go wrong. It put things into perspective, even if that perspective was a little warped."

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• Peter Rubin

My Classroom Life

"The best way to learn something is to teach it."

Longreads Valid
• Carolyn Wells

‘It’s Super Weird, Super Odd, Super Rare’: Meet The Twins Who Have Different Dads

" Family ‘It’s super weird, super odd, super rare’: meet the twins who have different dads When DNA test results shattered everything Lavinia and Michelle thought they knew about their family history, they also revealed something never before documented in the UK."

Longreads Valid
• Mac Barnett

The Secret Door

An image of the author Mac Barnett, who sits in a wood-paneled room, touched by streaks of light. Beside him is the cover of his new book, Make Believe.
"When we read, we make believe. We aren’t duped or ensorcelled. Deep down we decide. We make ourselves believe."

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• Brendan Fitzgerald

The Number You Have Dialed

"On the imperfection of elegies."

Longreads Valid
• Carolyn Wells

Secrets of the Bees: Revealing the Sneaky Genius of Nature’s Brightest Thinkers

"New science is showing that nature’s vital pollinators are smarter than we ever imagined."

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• Carolyn Wells

I Mean, Why Shouldn’t We All Smoke Cigarettes Again?

"We quit our bad habits for the sake of our future selves. How naïve of us."

Longreads Valid
• Seyward Darby

“You Are Always Just a Kiss Away From Me My Beautiful Boy.”

"Their family members vanished near Mass. Ave. They won’t stop searching."

Longreads Valid
• Longreads

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This edition highlights reading about messages in bottles, public benches, infinity, a series of books about everything, and pay-to-play orchestras.

Longreads Valid
• Peter Rubin

What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?

"Ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite, has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy. But it is also producing new insights in math and beyond."

Longreads Valid
• Carolyn Wells

We Bought an Orchestra

"The rise of pay-to-play in classical music."

Longreads Valid
• Seyward Darby

Their Ancestor Was an Enslaved Potter. They Are Battling to Recover His Legacy.

"The descendants of David Drake learned who he was 10 years ago. They see his jars as his artistic and spiritual inheritance—and their own."

Longreads Valid
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Asian Mothers, Bad Feelings: Notes on An All-conquering Stereotype

"A certain image of the tiger mom— strict, cold and demanding—is ubiquitous in popular culture. Why?"

Longreads Valid
• Krista Stevens

Up In Smoke

"I woke up one day to the realization that I had written ten good pages of a book that was due in five months."

Longreads Valid
• Brendan Fitzgerald

Shall We Play a Game?

"Historian Jon Peterson traces the route from Prussian military headquarters to Gary Gygax’s basement."

Longreads Valid
• Adam Dalva

Was It Worth It?

A grid of iPhones sits atop a checkered tablecloth. Each phone shows a different image of red meat.
"I didn’t think about those nachos even once. I had never experienced anything like it. Is this, I asked my friends, how it feels to be normal?"

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• Brendan Fitzgerald

The First Tomato to Know Everything

"On gray literature and Webster’s Timeline History books."

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• Peter Rubin

A Night’s Sleep

“An insomniac’s lifelong pursuit.”

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• Longreads

Finding the Magic in Writing with Lidia Yuknavitch

graphic of star wand with quote that reads: "I’m a huge believer in inventing your own rituals before writing." Attribution line reads "Lidia Yuknavitch" and bottom line of graphic reads "Episode 523 of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast"
On shitty first, second, and third drafts; embracing the struggle to write; and more.

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• Krista Stevens

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

"What happens when someone throws a message into the sea?"

Longreads Valid
• Brendan Fitzgerald

When Your Digital Life Vanishes

"A broken phone or corrupted drive can mean the loss of work, evidence, art, or the last traces of the dead. But sometimes data-recovery experts can summon lost files from the void."

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• Cheri Lucas Rowlands

The Disappearance of the Public Bench

"Benches are microcosms of an expansive debate about who belongs in urban public spaces. When they are removed or made uninviting, we lose more than just a place to rest."

Longreads Valid
• Longreads

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Deaths in donation bins, the Hardy boys, MAGA slop, billionaire playgrounds, and nostalgia for the complicated.

Longreads Valid
• Peter Rubin

The Hardy Men

"Why is a right-wing press reissuing century-old adolescent mystery novels?"