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Sharing the best nonfiction storytelling on the web since 2011.
Recommending stories from Viola Zhou, Mina Tavakoli, Stephanie Krzywonos, Maggie Millner, and Joe Hagan.
"The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection threw the mother of all influencer trips, featuring Tom Brady, Leo DiCaprio, Martha Stewart, and a hundred or so other A-listers. Vanity Fair climbed aboard…"
"Those of us who’ve been very unsafe as children, we seek out the unsafe. We seek out the lack of security, and if you have security, you blow it up."
"A visit to the dog show."
"In the early days of flight, airships were hailed as the future of war. Then disaster struck the USS Akron."
"Shame seemed like an obstacle to appreciating the poet. Instead, it became the key to understanding her work."
"In China and around the world, the sick and lonely turn to AI."
"Michelle Vanek disappeared on Mt. of the Holy Cross in 2005, setting off the largest search for a missing hiker in state history.
"From ochre to lapis lazuli, Stephanie Krzywonos opens a door into the entangled histories of our most iconic pigments, revealing how colors hold stories of both lightness and darkness."
"How a truck driver, a hotelier, and an art conservator brought a beloved street mural back into public view."
"Geography, capitalism, and America by bus."
"Mr. Currell, a management consultant, interviewed dozens of Disney enthusiasts, historians and experts, and visited Walt Disney World, which he first experienced in 1977."
"Until I was diagnosed last year, I had never met anyone with colon cancer—or at least anyone who had been open about it."
"Medieval people feared death by celibacy as much as venereal disease, and practiced complex sexual health regimens."
"When the greatest musicians of the 1970s needed an instrument—or a friend—my dad was there."
"The climates that run through us."
"Maybe it’s that it’s goddamned insane to ride a bull, and America is full of crazy people who for no earthly reason see that sort of thing and want to try it themselves."
"Different zip codes, different lives, but somehow, they all trace the same strange road back to a place called Hot Dog University."
"They inspired the same fear and delight that walking in the woods once did when I was a child: the fear and delight of discovery."
"At the outset of Texas' abortion ban, medical experts worried pregnant women would die from delays in care. The Dallas Morning News examined two such cases."
"The show captures disastrous custard-making, quintessentially British faux-modesty, and the blistering hubris of bakers—including me."
From crime panics to TikTok, summer's favorite vehicle has driven a bumpy road.
"These retired women in Texas have been through infertility, illness, layoffs, addiction and disappointing marriages. Now they are trying to create a utopia just for themselves."
"After the trauma of a high-risk medical procedure, Eric Markowitz discovered a kind of consciousness that lives not in thought — but in presence."
"A cognitively impaired New Jersey man grew infatuated with a Facebook Messenger chatbot with a young woman’s persona. His fatal attraction puts a spotlight on Meta’s AI guidelines, which have let chatbots make things up and engage in ‘sensual’ banter with children."
"I spent two days at Notion and saw an industry in upheaval. I also shipped some actual code."
Thoughtful stories for thoughtless times. Longreads has published hundreds of original stories—personal essays, reported features, reading lists, and more—and more than 13,000 editor’s picks. And they’re all funded by readers like you. Become a member today. A Note on Paywalls In order to publish compelling original work and pay writers a living wage, publications sometimes […]
"An obscure murder keeps resurfacing in Black story and song."
"An early winner in the generative AI wars was near collapse—then bet everything on a star-studded comeback. Can Stability AI beat the competition?"
"When an A&W takeout bag appeared on my neighbour’s porch in the middle of the night—followed by another, then another—I became obsessed with solving a fast food whodunit that was as baffling as it was beguiling."
"The puzzle of AI facial recognition."
"With a class of college students and inmates, teaching philosophy in prison is a rowdy, honest and hopeful provocation."
"Along the Yukon River, declining salmon populations threaten the future of the region’s sled dogs—and the communities that rely on them."
"The U.S. Forest Service has fought decades of efforts to better protect its crews — sending them into smoke without masks or warnings about the risks."
"You might think of them as cheap beach souvenirs. In fact, these tiny creatures have rich social lives and can live decades—and some humans are fighting to change their fate."
"Profits got bigger and condos got smaller. Now the bubble has popped, leaving behind thousands of unsellable, unlivable units."
"Music was hazardous in my family, yet I couldn't help playing—even in my sleep."
"A Native Hawaiian mother’s fight to keep her family in Lāhainā despite soaring costs, mortgage limbo, and land-hungry investors eager to own a piece of Hawaiʻi."
"America’s special operators bring the war home."
"Before Ryan Wedding landed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list as a high-level associate of El Chapo, he was a bright-eyed kid from Thunder Bay. The inside story of how an Olympic snowboarding prodigy became one of the world’s most dangerous and powerful drug lords."
"Abraham Jiménez Enoa draws us into the underground network that runs La Bolita, Cuba’s wildy popular—and illegal—daily lottery."
Recommending excellent stories by Tony Ho Tran, Rachel Aviv, Ariel Saramandi, Theo Lipsky, and Inori Roy.
"Ian Rogers was convinced it was up to him to save America. The gun industry’s sales tactics — playing up paranoia and glorifying combat — may be creating a pipeline of extremists willing to open fire."
"Returning to Vietnam with my parents, 50 years after the war ended."
"Lee Kantar, the only dedicated state moose biologist in the country, is charged with everything from managing the hunt to countering the deadly onslaught of winter ticks."
"How a mild-mannered scientist named Roxie Laybourne created the field of forensic ornithology."
"The illegal free party scene has come back: the green fields of the West Country and Wales rock to the sound of a repetitive beat for days on end."
Six stories on the shady side of scholarship.
"Some psychiatric patients may actually have treatable autoimmune conditions. But what happens to the newly sane?"
"Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero. We analyzed the conversation."