The Final Five Percent By Tim Requarth Feature If traumatic brain injuries can impact the parts of the brain responsible for personality, judgment, and impulse control, maybe injury should be a mitigating factor in criminal trials — but one neuroscientist discovers that assigning crime a biological basis creates more issues than it solves. Friends: We Need Your Help to Fund More Stories
Research and Rescue: Saving Species from Ourselves By Ashley Braun Feature We’re developing high-tech genetic tools to pour new life into animals lost to human destruction. Deciding how — and whether — to use that power is as complex as the science behind it.
A Fresh Look at The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1998 Album Adore By Longreads Feature Loved and loathed in equal measure, one thing critics can’t take from this influential 90s band is their willingness to evolve musically.
Breaking the Family Silence on Alcoholism By Alicia Lutes Feature Alicia Lutes contemplates her family’s history of addiction, her mother’s failing liver, and the effect it’s all had on her generation.
Encrypted Phones, By Criminals, For Criminals By Krista Stevens Highlight How a criminal-turned-crime-blogger got the notice of the most notorious drug trafficking duo in Scotland.
Memorializing a Glacier and Hoping for the Future By Sari Botton Highlight Iceland holds a funeral for Okjökull, once a glacier, now “dead ice.”
We’re All Tourists Now, So Let’s Stop with the Endless, Tedious Quests for Authenticity By Ben Huberman Highlight In Iceland, overtourism has transformed the island in a few short years — and locals and visitors alike try to grapple with the change.
Olympic Destroyer: The Cyberattack on the 2018 Winter Games By Krista Stevens Highlight It was Russia, in the cybertubes, using stolen passwords, a secret backdoor, and layers upon layers of false flag cloak work meant to stump security analysts.
Location, Location, Location: Six Stories on Moving House By Jacqueline Alnes Reading List Jacqueline Alnes explores identity and privilege in these six stories about moving house.
Life After Pain By Michelle Weber Highlight One day, Ge Gao’s right hand stopped working. Then the pain started, and it’s never stopped.
You Talk Real Good By Alison Stine Feature Alison Stine confronts the ways in which being hard of hearing has made her job search more difficult.
Less Work, More Friends, No Consequences By Longreads Reading List Workaholics burn the midnight oil, while the rich and powerful fail up.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Brett Forrest, Lizzie Presser, Ahmet Altan, Lisa Miller, and James K. Williamson.
Cut From the Same Cloth By Myfanwy Tristram Feature Artist Myfanwy Tristram was irritated by her teenage daughter’s extreme fashions — until she took an illustrated journey into their origins.
‘I Went Quiet…and That Allowed Me To Understand’: The Life of a Molecatcher By Tobias Carroll Feature Marc Hamer discusses life, death, and the lost art of catching a mole.
Queens of Infamy: Njinga By Anne Thériault Feature The Portuguese colonizers of West Central Africa learned it the hard way: you mess with the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba at your own peril.
Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo-Hoo By Christy Lynch Feature A Childless Millennial’s Guide to Falling Apart at Disney World
Hello, Forgetfulness; Hello, Mother By Max Feature Peering into the mirror of her mother, Marcia Aldrich wonders whether she too is sentenced to dementia.
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Orchids By Katy Kelleher Feature Sometimes a flower is just a flower, and sometimes it’s a powerful vehicle for giving free rein to our worst colonialist and misogynist impulses.
A Fresh Look at The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1998 Album Adore By Longreads Feature Loved and loathed in equal measure, one thing critics can’t take from this influential 90s band is their willingness to evolve musically.
‘I Was Interested in the People Who Are Stuck With These Memories.’ By Victoria Namkung Feature Steph Cha discusses her new novel “Your House Will Pay,” the LA Riots, the Korean American Angeleno community, her 3,600 Yelp reviews, and pushing back against gatekeepers in publishing.
Surviving the Shattering of My Mind and My Marriage By Longreads Feature Andrea J. Buchanan contemplates the way illness and pain can freeze a sufferer in time, as if encased in glass.
This Month In Books: ‘One Degree Is About the Uncanny’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is suspended in a state of anticipation.
Same Sh*itty Media Men, Different Day By Sari Botton Highlight Rebecca Traister asks how NBC can possibly change its misogynist culture if it keeps the same bad actors at the top.
Less Work, More Friends, No Consequences By Longreads Reading List Workaholics burn the midnight oil, while the rich and powerful fail up.
Editor’s Roundtable: Stories About Stories By Longreads Commentary Longreads editors discuss stories in ProPublica/The New Yorker, Wired, and Esquire.
Editor’s Roundtable: Climate of the Future, Music of the Past By Longreads Commentary Longreads editors discuss stories in Miami New Times, The New Yorker, 5280 Magazine, and The Believer.
It’s Time To Talk About Solar Geoengineering By Longreads Feature We need to start talking about seemingly drastic approaches to the climate crisis, such as sun-dimming aerosols, right now — or we risk losing democratic control of the process.
Fire Sale: Finance and Fascism in the Amazon Rainforest By Will Meyer Commentary From global capital to YouTube, carbon credits to indigenous land defenders in their own words, Will Meyer has compiled a reading list on who lit the match and how the fire might be stopped.
Memorializing a Glacier and Hoping for the Future By Sari Botton Highlight Iceland holds a funeral for Okjökull, once a glacier, now “dead ice.”
Life After Pain By Michelle Weber Highlight One day, Ge Gao’s right hand stopped working. Then the pain started, and it’s never stopped.
You Talk Real Good By Alison Stine Feature Alison Stine confronts the ways in which being hard of hearing has made her job search more difficult.
Breaking the Family Silence on Alcoholism By Alicia Lutes Feature Alicia Lutes contemplates her family’s history of addiction, her mother’s failing liver, and the effect it’s all had on her generation.
Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo-Hoo By Christy Lynch Feature A Childless Millennial’s Guide to Falling Apart at Disney World
