Longreads

"A biography on Wikipedia might not be intended as a prize, but nobody knows its value like the people who’ve had one and then lost it." @duncanfyfe.net for @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/the-tr...

"When we build, when we think, when we act, we do so in honor of every object, thought, and action which has preceded this one, and we are changed by the process." @jamesbridle.bsky.social for @emergencemagazine.bsky.social: emergencemagazine.org/essay/benchm...

After a diagnosis of ventricular tachycardia, Kristin Idaszak rarely left home, until she realized: "Staying at home wouldn't save me. The threat resided inside my own chest." A new Longreads essay on death, ossuaries, and learning to live again: longreads.com/2026/10/22/o...

"They were beautiful and horrible, familiar and strange. I could not stop staring." An essay by Daniel Barnum on grief, skulls, and finding a way to live in a world that's too much. Co-published with @agnimagazine.bsky.social: longreads.com/2026/10/15/m...

Why do we visit places of death? Kristin Idaszak reflects on sites like Auschwitz, the Paris catacombs, and a crowded bone chapel in the Czech Republic—and on what she calls the "Disneyfication of death." longreads.com/2026/10/22/o...

Our Top 5: —Bottling brains (@equatormag.bsky.social) —Decades of doubt (@texasmonthly.bsky.social ) —Cost of careers (@propublica.org) —Mexican meals (@orionmagazine.bsky.social ) —Frustrated fish (@biographic.bsky.social) longreads.com/2026/10/23/t...

"Belfi told me that other players had warned him that he would see little of his first bonus installment. He left the bank with nothing." @ggarciaroberts.bsky.social for @propublica.org www.propublica.org/article/how-...

"Forty-thousand bodies' worth of bones. Probably more. My brain buckled at the magnitude." In a new @longreads.com essay, Kristin Idaszak writes about visiting an ossuary in her 20s, when death was just an idea, and returning years later, after her body made it real. longreads.com/2026/10/22/o...

"The text beside the skulls explained itself: Brought together is a euphemistic way of saying, assembled by grave robbing." An essay by Daniel Barnum, co-published with @agnimagazine.bsky.social: longreads.com/2026/10/15/m...

"The social contract is different for them. They’re not going to do what they’re told. That is the beautiful thing about a teenager, and it’s one of the reasons that they may not excel at paid work." Sylvie McNamara for @washingtonian.com washingtonian.com/2026/10/19/s...

Jasper Craven once spent half a year undercover at a private security job. He is stridently critical, deeply compassionate, and truly funny. Find out for yourself via his Longreads Questionnaire longreads.com/2026/10/20/j...

"Right now, we’re in the midst of an attention crisis, individually and collectively snared in an infinite scroll of disruption and distraction. Berger saw this crisis coming and foresaw its consequences." A.O. Scott for @nytimes.com / The New York Times Magazine www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/m...

"The story of Juan Méndez riding through the streets of Juárez, selling burritos to soldiers and civilians alike, is a story that a city told itself to build resilience." Victoria Blanco for @orionmagazine.bsky.social: orionmagazine.org/article/feed...

"Despite the claims of collectors, a skull can only belong to its own person, not a museum or any other buyer on the market." A new essay by Daniel Barnum, co-published with @agnimagazine.bsky.social: longreads.com/2026/10/15/m...

"The forest, however, was real." A story with lessons for Seattle, where "native" white residents fight to preserve individual trees on private lawns in order to keep other people out of the platted, clearcut land that long ago replaced the forest. longreads.com/2026/10/13/a...

“...they had been brought together to disprove a piece of 19th-century race science, which seemed like one of the better reasons to collect skulls... Brought together is a euphemistic way of saying, assembled by grave robbing.” longreads.com/2026/10/15/m...

In our Weekly Top 5: * Losing human skills @aeon.co * Devastating manipulation @dispatchmedia.bsky.social * Fire suppression failures @newyorker.com * Krillin’ it @nowvoyagermagazine.bsky.social * An epic eventyr (New York Times Magazine) longreads.com/2026/10/16/t...

"In a way, I haven’t stopped considering it, telling the story again and again, trying to understand something, to make it make sense. Even now, I find it tempting to dismiss the stranger as the uncomplicated villain of the narrative." Paul Rankin for Southlands southlandsmag.com/p/1d1d9380-6...

YES, I love this new @longreads.com essay by Daniel Barnum! Thanks @k-e-c.bsky.social and @agnimagazine.bsky.social for the opportunity to co-publish this one.

I love this essay, from the new @agnimagazine.bsky.social (out today!), and I'm so glad that the great @longreads.com team did, too. thanks especially to @cherilucasrowlands.com for making this happen 🖤 longreads.com/2026/10/15/m...

"I think of those who came down these sea lanes before me with fortune and glory on their minds. I think of which excellent vegan breakfast I am going to have. But mostly I think: All this for fish oil?" Gordon Peake for @nowvoyagermagazine.bsky.social nowvoyagermag.com/travel/suppl...

It would be easy to blame our deskilled bodies on the machines themselves. But, for centuries, modern human societies have been sold the lie that we are machines." Melanie Challenger for Aeon: aeon.co/essays/the-m... #Longreads #Technology #Intelligence #Bodies #AI #Machines

"It would be easy to blame our deskilled bodies on the machines themselves. But, for centuries, modern human societies have been sold the lie that we are machines." Melanie Challenger for @aeon.co: aeon.co/essays/the-m...

"For some teens, identifying with animals can serve as a coping mechanism during the middle school years, when peer rejection and self-awareness peak." Kara Baskin for @bostonmagazine.bsky.social: www.bostonmagazine.com/news/therian...

"In Arkansas, all it took was a few clicks on the Arkansas secretary of state website, $45 and an American flag . . ." @propublica.org @arktimes.bsky.social @mtnstspotlight.bsky.social @theassemblync.bsky.social www.propublica.org/article/prop...

"Neither the new government nor the grid of lots for sale were to be discovered on the ground. They were ideas in people’s heads, notes on paper. In the 'womb of futurity,' maybe. The forest, however, was real." longreads.com/2026/10/13/a...

Thirty years ago tonight, a supermarket parking lot in Bennington, Vermont. Day six. From my journal: “today telneted to freeway and got the message from Joyce that mail sent to the MCImail account was returned.” longreads.com/2026/09/22/f...

"The web of 1996 was not yet monetized in the way it is today." i graduated high school in 1997 and got my first email address around that time and boy howdy can i tell you, it was a different time. longreads.com/2026/09/22/f...

"I’m not aware of anyone who gets to write a sixty-thousand-word magazine piece these days." @justjokes247.bsky.social for @thebaffler.com on John McPhee, journalism, nature, and attention thebaffler.com/latest/up-a-...

In this week's Top 5: —Orange, the new everything (@nplusonemag.com) —Data centers, the gold rush (@theverge.com) —Sandy “Moose” West, the hero (@bittersouth.bsky.social) —AI, the staff (@oaklandreviewofbooks.org) —Boy dinners, the community (@GQMagazine) longreads.com/2026/10/09/t...

Our latest Longreads Questionnaire features award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki, who writes an essential newsletter for freelance writers, THE REPORTED ESSAY: longreads.com/2026/10/08/q...

In 1996, the Blondin family drove all around the US, blogging about it all before “blog” was even a word. “We were doing something that had no name and no manual, and we were doing it over a dial-up modem while living in a motorhome.” [longreads.com]

"Within that space, you have a whole generation that was never really taught how to express their feelings effectively." —Zack Hauptman for @gqmagazine.bsky.social www.gq.com/story/boydin...

Q: What’s one longread that you can’t stop thinking about? A: “Julia Understands Everything,” by Richard E. Meyer, in the @latimes.com magazine. I often assign this story to students. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 1996. longreads.com/2026/10/08/q...

"They were as old as 70 and as young as 5. They died in the heat or the cold. But they all died within range of a surveillance camera." Lillian Perlmutter for @technologyreview.com & Times of San Diego www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/21/1...

"It’s like we were talking up a car’s bluetooth audio system when the person behind the wheel couldn’t even figure out how to move their seat back far enough to drive." Stephanie Uchino-Beach for @oaklandreviewofbooks.org: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/how-ai-repla...

"The decades-long pursuit of a treatment for Jenna’s disease followed a very different path. There was no single hero, no lone scientist seeking glory." An excerpt from the new @atavist.com story by Mark Johnson, about a family that made medical history: longreads.com/2026/10/06/r...

"The right to alter one’s consciousness does not include a company’s right to deceive." Eric Leas for @aeon.co: aeon.co/essays/a-sci...

Thirty years ago today, October 4, 1996, we set out for Cleveland. A family, a website, and an online following, two years before Google existed. How it unfolded, at Longreads: longreads.com/2026/09/22/f...

"Many writers need an inciting obstruction. For Henry James, it was his own sexuality. For Nabokov, it was a homeland to which he could never return. For Barry, it has been a family secret that it was not his place to speak of." Giles Harvey for @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/m...