Powerlifter
Traditionally ostracized in the weight room, women who dare to lift weights discover strength they were previously denied.
longreads
A collection of 187 issues
Dark Waters
Some of the world’s largest, oldest fish live in Oregon. Why anyone would want to vandalize them, even abduct them, takes explaining.
Reconsider the Oyster
Tracking a single oyster from the Gulf to Bourbon Street, to a 1,300-ton pile of shells, provides a tour through Louisiana’s precarious coastal economy.
The Messenger
From “Truth Trucks” to viral videos, Operation Rescue head Troy Newman’s word is his sword.
Dirty Words
Throwing f-bombs may be offensive to some people, but it's also one of the greatest mental health regimens ever devised.
IH8YRST8
Studying drivers across the country for signs of license-plate prejudice—or, why everyone loves Vermont drivers and hates Texans.
Save the Humans
Environmentalists are increasingly hugging people, not trees. Can solving climate change and achieving “climate justice” become the same thing?
The Writing of Art
Protesters are clashing in the street over paintings. What is it, whether in art or literature, that makes one thing better than another?
The Loss
To understand everything wrong about health care in America today, look to a horrifying trend in amputation.
Press Rewind
What one journalist learned by vicariously sitting in on David Carr’s master class—with only his teacher’s reputation, extant syllabus, and students’ recollections to guide the way.
The New Town and Gown
As colleges proceed to charge more and more, real-estate developers in the neighborhoods around them look to cash in.
Hunting the Hound
A lifelong phobia is the result of a terrifying childhood incident. But the real culprit may be Arthur Conan Doyle.
Crimewatcher
The victim of a robbery starts attending trials in New Orleans to understand the system while her burglar serves time in jail. Then he gets out.
Mrs. Bundy
For the mother of a serial killer, a chance to connect with victims on live TV offers a shot at redemption.
The Girl on the Lawn
Forget anxiety, overcaution, or just plain unhappiness. The real problem with parenting is philosophy.
How the Other Half Shares
When the media talks about social media, it’s always about young, white Americans. We spoke to a wider sample—including a sex worker, a pastor’s wife, a rapper—to see why people do what they do online.
The Low Road
Not everyone who breaks your heart is a monster. And not everyone who wounds you deserves to be wounded in return.
This Was No Accident
Forty years after Jaws, why the very first blockbuster should be considered art—and how it helped one man to survive.
My Letter From Oliver Sacks
Migraines, 3D magic, and an unlikely correspondence from one “incredibly stereoscopic person” to another.
Meet the Flintstones
How to give away a house in Flint, Michigan, home not only to a water scandal but record violence.
Paper Citizen
America is a proud nation of immigrants—try telling that to everyone on the other side of the door. Life as a white-collar undocumented immigrant in New York.
The Riflemaker Dreams of Africa
The American West is a myth. One Wyoming gunmaker looks anywhere else—abroad, in the past, in himself—for new wilderness.
The Death of Clemency
Clemency is supposed to be a “fail-safe” in our judicial system. Thanks to a handful of powerful, well-paid political appointees, that notion is proving lethally incorrect.
Symbolism for Beginners
For tens of thousands of years, wild horses have inspired humans—to nurture, to create, to slaughter—culminating in the past century of America’s legal and psychological battles over the horses we can’t own.
In the Wilderness
A young girl in South Dakota—the last school-age child remaining in her community—epitomizes the challenges of rural American Judaism.
Around the World on 18 Plates
We asked people around the globe—in Uganda, Ecuador, Fiji, and more—to make food from the opposite side of Earth.
Binge Reading Disorder
The typical American consumes more than 100,000 words a day and remembers none of them.
The Accidental Actor
Stumbling onto a movie set in Los Angeles—and then staying there for as long as humanly possible—offers lessons in acting and reality.
My Time of Not Dying
Call it Kreider’s Law: You can’t be grateful to be alive your entire life. Especially when there's an arms race going on inside your head.
All Happy Couples Are Alike
Better to have loved and lost—and best to have written an essay about it. Surviving the Russian melodrama of young love.
The Marlboro Men of Chernivtsi
Where there’s smoke, there’s smuggling. Before the Ukrainian border became a dangerous war zone, it was a profitable bootlegging arena.
The Books
A couple’s decision to combine bookshelves supplies a series of revelations.
Three Feet by Six Feet by Three Feet
A visit to the granddaddy of Japan’s capsule hotels—with cot-sized individual spaces and shared amenities—and a lesson in different methods of getting along.
Do You Believe in Ghosts?
Ignore the critics: Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” is not only a serious, complex comment on space policy, it’s a heartbreaking, philosophical look at the value of time.
Editors’ Favorites From 2014
The staff choose their most-liked pieces published in 2014: a painting expedition through the Underground Railroad, a personal memory of Vivian Maier, and a restaurant review that isn’t a restaurant review.
The Mother Wave
Before the days of GPS, sailors navigated using the feel of the waves. On a mission to learn the ocean's secret rhythms, a researcher discovers a coded message in a ship logbook.
The Kings of Simcoe County
At an Elvis festival in rural Canada, scores of tribute artists (not "impersonators") pay homage to the King. When searching for the meaning of it all, try not to overthink it.
Um for the Holidays
It's the most wonderful time of year, but for atheists and agnostics, it means something altogether different. We asked a group of non-believers to tell us how they’re spending their secular holiday seasons.
The Retreat
How to spend a holiday alone and not get lonely, with adventures in BBQ, books, rummage shops, and cabin porn.
Catching Up With the Mp3 Bloggers
A decade ago, and then again five years later, we gathered a set of music bloggers who pioneered online music discovery—often to the chagrin of record labels. Now we reconvene to discuss the current state of listening to and reading about music online.
Queen of the Jungle
Orangutans are some of humans’ closest relatives, genetically. They also rarely exhibit aggression, despite how we've abused them. One is different.
The Law of the Instrument
More than 200 letters to the editor, op-eds, and editorials from newspapers across the US reveal a country divided on who should be allowed to vote.
The T-Word
Media depictions of trans culture seem more prevalent than ever, but off-key representations sensationalize and injure their subjects. It’s time to change that. Five transgender people discuss how.
Back to Skol
NFL star Randy Moss is now a high school coach. A Vikings fan explains how watching one childhood hero move on with his life helps him say goodbye to another.
The Combination Lock Test
A man dies, leaving behind, among other things, a combination lock. Opening it may just prove the existence of the afterlife.
Chicago Fear
Life in a city, including its dangers, can be evaluated in a thousand ways. But dangerous and scary are different adjectives, and different measurements. Especially after a man appears below your stairs.
Fallon and Byrne
Continuing our series where we ask novelists to write restaurant reviews that are absolutely not restaurant reviews, the author of the Southern Reach trilogy meets his match in a Dublin brie.
Blues on Wheels
A writer becomes a carrier for the United States Postal Service out of a long-held love for the mail. What she discovers are screams, threats, lies, labor violations, and dog attacks.
The Iron in Man
How a book, booze, and a guilty hangover brought an admittedly non-athletic man to the starting line, and what happened next.
Harry Potter and the Shades of Twilight
A generation of women read the “Harry Potter” series as teens, “Twilight” in college, and “Fifty Shades of Grey” in their twenties. What is the cumulative effect?
Happiness Is a Pink Gun
Mainstream country music is dominated by bros singing about girls in cutoffs and drinking tequila. But some female country artists are ready to exchange fire.
The Medium
Talking about language is already tough. Try discussing a brand new language via Skype with two hearing linguists, plus another via text, who happens to be deaf, and see what you learn.
Water From Elephants
Humans have kept elephants for thousands of years, longer than we've domesticated chickens. Yet the great animals’ capacity to cry for freedom comes as a shock.
King Lear With Sheep
London traffic, bladder control, and a runaway Cordelia challenge a mostly wool production of Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”
Bang for Your Buck
Two dozen people—a banker, a sex worker, a pastor, “the World’s First Publicly Traded Person”—tell us the best way to invest a single dollar.
Mating Habits of the Asterisk
Living out of a van, without an address to pin you down, can be blissful and carefree, and occasionally miserable. But the same goes for love.
Remnants of the Underground Railroad
The Thirteenth Amendment passed 150 years ago, abolishing slavery. Today, little of the Underground Railroad still remains. A painter hits the road to discover what’s intact.
The Absolute Minimum
Highlights from a reading of 200-plus letters to the editor, from newspapers in all 50 states, to determine what Crazy America thinks about raising—or lowering—the minimum wage.
Main Street, USA
Sinclair Lewis despised his hometown in Minnesota. It disliked him, too, especially after being lampooned in a bestselling novel that mocked the citizens for their small-town ways. These days, though, he's all they've got.
Big Water
The California Dream is made possible by old water and big water. Unfortunately, the former doesn’t care about us, and the latter’s running dry. A native reports from the wine country, where fires loom.
One Small Store
Two men, separated by more than 150 years, discover the folly of attempting Western-style capitalism in Micronesia.
What Doesn’t Kill You Doesn’t Kill You
A visit to a bear sanctuary could cure you of your bear phobia. Or it could turn your fear into a full-blown obsession.
An Unthinkably Modern Miracle
In today’s health care system, medicine often comes with a strange, Faustian bargain—including a plan for almost everything except the price.
The Unofficial Roger Ebert Reader on Addiction
When Roger Ebert died, America was deprived of one of its finest critics. We also lost one of our best writers on addiction.
Gentlemen, Formerly
A gentleman in 1720 could read Greek while mounting a running horse. Today’s gentleman reads GQ in the bathroom. From rapists to stylists, a history of the American gentleman.
Grandpa
Passing the summer days in North Carolina’s low country often meant sitting on the porch with Grandpa and his radio. Today, it doesn’t take much to go back there.
Editors' Favorites From 2013
The staff choose their most-liked pieces published in 2013: a trip to Patsy Cline's divided hometown, the complete biography of North West, a cold case of hit-and-run, and no shortage of great quotes about dead bodies.
Burying the Present
Thirty years ago, two friends created a vision of the future—a space opera put to tape—and buried it in a time capsule. Listening again today, it turns out we remember the past as it never quite was.
A Lifetime’s One Regret
Does hindsight improve with age? People, ages five to 60, name their life's biggest mistake and what they learned.
A Moving Experience
Travel is mostly boredom—and if you’re not bored, you’re pretty sure that everyone else is having more fun. Selected for “The Best American Travel Writing 2014,” the woes of professional travel writers.
The Cause of All the Commotion
This Saturday, the 2013 hurricane season will end—and with it, possibly, New York City’s final hurricane-less year.
Brief Interviews With Very Small Publishers
Magazine publishing is a dark art. But the world of niche publishing—people who create magazines for necrophiliacs or donkey hobbyists, or for those of us who like to ride really small trains—features its own requirements.
Let Football Live
Cracks are appearing in football’s helmet—injuries to athletes, injuries to the game. For one former high school and college player, the damage has gone too far.
Where the Himalayan Moss Grows
Going on a five-day cleanse—subsisting on a diet of shots, smoothies, very few actual foods, and no caffeine—leads to visions of apocalypse. From 2013, a quest to find the seven billionth child on Earth.
My Brief, Binding Road
Since the closing down of Silk Road, the number of drug dealers selling online has increased nearly 50 percent. A former customer waits in fear, wondering why he used his real name.
Once Upon a Time in the Middle East
Driving from Lebanon toward Syria, across the Saudi Arabian desert to Dammam, in a taxi among the refugees of Beirut—quickly becomes the Wild West.
The Bolshoi in the Dark
Rough waters for Russia’s fabled Bolshoi Theatre have prompted soul-searching among the country’s dancers, officials, and fans.
A Sudden and Awful Manner
In early New England, anyone who stood near an open door or window faced mortal danger. A conversation with a woman who hunts for gravestones with epitaphs describing death by lightning strike.
No One Is Innocent
Think baseball today is rotten from drugs and punks? A century ago, things weren’t much better. A brief history of baseball's dark traditions—cheating, substance abuse, obscenity, violence—and the colorful players who brought them to life.
The Works and Days of Elena Shvarts
A literary gumshoe visits St. Petersburg to track down the so-called “ninja of Russian verse,” Elena Shvarts, who died in 2010 leaving almost nothing behind.
Chiraq, Drillinois
Originating on the South Side, drill music has attracted major labels to Chicago in search of young rappers—as gang violence turns the city into the murder capital. Each has everything to do with the other.
Adjusting the Picture
Some of the best TV shows these days, whether we’re watching them on television sets or online, are being compared to novels—and even sonnets. A chat with some of the leading thinkers in TV writing to find out what comes next.
E Pluribus, Gen X
Generation X has always been able to fashion its own best outcome. Now it’s time to take that DIY attitude and fix the nation. Because you know who really won the American Revolution? That’s right: Slackers.
We Are the Resurrection
A reporter spends a season trailing one of London's most infamous soccer clubs while its soul is rebuilt from scratch. A cautionary tale—for New Yorkers, especially—of super fans, gonzo money, and the doctrine that is "organic football."
Super Sad Tiny Home Fetish
Micro-living is no longer just for the very poor and the very bohemian. But how much space do we really deserve? Tracking down the minimum square-footage below which no one should be forced to endure.
The Moroccan Deception
A man follows his grandparents’ trek to Morocco—where the Alaouite Dynasty has ruled since 1666—to search for so-called “sacred music” amid a feedback loop of riots, arrests, and the promise of miracles.
Midfield
Your opponents have something to prove, certain wishes they want fulfilled. Also, they really hope their knees don’t blow out before halftime. Welcome to over-40s soccer.
Flood-Tide Below Me
Seeking respite from a life lived in war zones—too many rebel factions, too many gunshots, too many backfiring motorcycles that sounded like gunshots—a family discovers temporary shelter in the outer edges of New York City. And then, the deluge.
A Closer Walk With Thee
For residents of Patsy Cline’s hometown of Winchester, Va., the struggle over how to remember the famous country singer begins with deciding what sort of a legacy she left—and whether they want it.
Crack Rock City
This week, Detroit’s new emergency manager released his first report on the city’s dire affairs. But residents have long been accustomed to life in what’s essentially a failed state. A native author meets the motorcycle men working hard to save Detroit, one fiend at a time.
Everything in This City Must
After six months in Leipzig, a German reporter asks the novelist what he’ll miss. But it’s back here in the United States where more dangerous questions take shape, none easily answered with good beer.
The Case of the Hungry Stranger
A man is always more complicated than his paper trail—especially when he’s your father, who walked out one day.
Six Strings
Growing up in Ohio, far from the homeland of her parents, a girl puzzles over her identity, until the strings of a sitar create a connection.
Bad Land
America is full of guns—one gun for every citizen—and Americans often use them to shoot one another. It’s not enough anymore to say we love our guns. The question is: Why do we kill?
Start of Darkness
The world of the myope is often a nicer place—faces lack wrinkles, and trees seem to be painted by Monet. Then, during a visit to Moscow, a black spot appears.
I Wish That We Could Both Be There
In 1974, a car hits a seven-year-old boy in central New Jersey. The boy dies. From 2013, a former friend starts to probe the causes, effects, statistics, and consequences.
Home on the Thames
London's evolution is measured in centuries, not years. But when half of the city's new abodes go to foreign buyers—frequently as third or fourth homes—who's steering the design? Assessing Battersea's return from 30 years in the desert, just in time for a brand new American embassy.
Rainy Night in Georgia
Even in the most forsaken corners of the Caucasus, daily life can boil down to domestic turmoil, hip-hop videos, and arguing over Bryan Adams’s nationality.
Smog of War
More than a decade after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan—now our longest war—most Americans still know next to nothing about the people who live there, and the liberties denied them. Lessons from a rapid education.
Right Here Waiting
After frequenting a local haunt where nobody knows his name, a Chicago writer makes new friends, rips on Richard Marx online, and then suddenly lands a real live celebrity musician at their door.