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Longreads features

Living in an Alive World

Soft eyes, deep listening, and other ways to extend human perception beyond our limits.

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Recent editors’ picks

Skill Nostalgia

Joshua Habgood-Coote | Aeon | July 6, 2026 | 4,102 words

“Is all the beekeeping, baking and leatherwork just escapist fantasy or the start of a radically human approach to work?”

On Loving Birds

Kulsoom Ijaz | Guernica Magazine | June 15, 2026 | 2,382 words

“A couple of years after I began volunteering, I realized I was hell-bent on healing birds because they, too, had healed me—in more ways than one.”

The Forgotten Bombing of LaGuardia Airport

Elon Green | Slate | July 7, 2026 | 4,408 words

“It’s been called ‘one of the greatest cold cases of the 20th century.’ It remains unsolved. But what happened next is almost a worse crime.”

No Return

William Finnegan | The New Yorker | June 29, 2026 | 9,169 words

“Did an experienced alpinist leave his girlfriend to die at the top of a mountain?”

Silicon Valley Circuits

Hua Hsu | Places Journal | July 8, 2026 | 6,503 words

“Route 85 in California now inspires dread. Some of us remember when it was a vision of the future.”

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Weekly Top 5

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Learn to Love Your Search Results Again.

Introducing the Longreads Story Recommender.

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Excerpts from The Atavist Magazine, our sister publication

The Fugitive Childhood of a Cocaine Smuggler’s Daughters

“When their parents ripped two young sisters from their privileged lives, gave them fake names, and took them on the lam, they thought it was because their father was in trouble with the IRS. It would be years before they learned the truth about his life of crime.”

Open Season

Colorado’s San Luis Valley was a wildlife poacher’s paradise. Then an undercover federal agent arrived.

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