The Best of Longreads
20+ most popular Longreads articles, as voted by our community.
Sharing and publishing the best longform stories since 2009. An @automattic publication and the sister site of @Atavist. @longreads@mastodon.world
Trending
These are currently making the rounds on Refind.
The Buddy System
Mylène Dressler | Longreads | April 11, 2023 | 19 minutes (5,461 words) Surfing shouldn’t be done alone. Like diving, spelunking, rock climbing, or cutting a watermelon, too much can go sideways.…
Longreads on Addiction
Breaking the Family Silence on Alcoholism
Alicia Lutes contemplates her family’s history of addiction, her mother’s failing liver, and the effect it’s all had on her generation.
When Running Toward Yourself Looks Like Running Away
Amber Leventry recalls how getting sober forced them to confront and reveal important truths about their identity.
Longreads on Basic Income
What Should Universal Basic Income Look Like?
Andrew Yang made it news, but we need a better plan.
Longreads on Books
Ten Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2022
Longtime contributor Pravesh Bhardwaj read and and shared 276 short stories on the #longreads Twitter hashtag in 2021. Here are his favorites.
Longreads on Brain
How to Survive a Car Crash in 10 Easy Steps
A journalist navigates a world forever changed by her traumatic brain injury.
Longreads on Digital Life
The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews
Glimpses of humanity in an unlikely corner of the internet.
Age, Sex, Location
Chatrooms taught me everything I needed to know about what real people were like before I had to grow up and become one of them.
Longreads on Food
Life in the Slow Lane
Olivia Potts| Longreads | November, 2022 | 16 minutes (4,649 words) It’s six in the morning, and Robert Booth has already been on the road for three hours. Sitting alongside him in the cab of his…
Eating To Save My Mind
Can diet determine the future of your mental health? Claire Fitzsimmons attempts to find out through a month of Whole30.
Longreads on Justice
The Final Five Percent
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 o…
Longreads on Religion
Losing My Religion at Christian Camp
Katy Hershberger recalls the way her decade at Christian summer camp both shaped and condemned her views of faith and girlhood.
I Had To Leave My Mother So I Could Survive
Elisabet Velasquez reckons with a lifetime of disharmony with her religious, mentally ill mother.
Longreads on Sociology
A Sociology of the Smartphone
Smartphones have altered the texture of everyday life, digesting many longstanding spaces and rituals, and transforming others beyond recognition.
Longreads on Spirituality
The (Loud) Soundtrack to My Struggle with Faith
After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Anna Gazmarian grapples with her evangelical upbringing, and finds solace in screamo music.
Mountains, Transcending
“Ever since I was five years old,” wrote opera singer–turned–Buddhist lama Alexandra David-Néel, “I craved to go beyond the garden gate, to follow the road that passed it by, and to set out for the…
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
“I Had to Face the Blues Every Day”
Soul and gospel singer Candi Staton let no hardship stand in the way of her voice, one that helped define the music of her generation.
Finding a Path in a Broken System
Thailand is a top destination for gender confirmation surgery. Its success is a symptom of Western failure.
What It’s Like to Lose Your Short-Term Memory : Longreads
An exclusive excerpt from the new memoir by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee.
Queens of Infamy: Isabella of France
Married off at age 12, Isabella put up with her husband’s shenanigans over decades. Eventually, the She-Wolf of France had had enough.
Eating Alone
We’re eating alone more often than in any previous generation. But why should a meal on our own be uninspired? Why shouldn’t the French saying “life is too short to drink bad wine”…
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