"Some of those stories may have snuck past you the first time, and that’s unavoidable; the ideal moment might not always be 'Right here, right now.' But good stories tend to stick around." Catch up on some fantastic stories you missed the first time around.

In this week's Top 5: • Midair mayhem @newstatesman1913.bsky.social • Know when to fold 'em @slate.com • For art's sake @Economist.com • Breech of trust @theguardian.com • May it trees the court @harpers.bsky.social longreads.com/2025/12/19/t...

"Great for the commute or that comfy spot on your couch, number five stories offer a handy distraction from the mundane or that holiday gathering you wish you’d declined." All our number fives, in a handy digest: longreads.com/2025/12/18/b...

"More than 150 years after it was created to train cabmen in horse-drawn carriages, the Knowledge still covers roughly the same area: a six-mile radius of the city . . . including some 25,000 streets and 6,000 points of interest." —Isabella Kwai for @nytimes.com

"Number one stories sit up straight and make direct eye contact. They’ve got a strong point of view, they often take a stand, and they always make you think." Check out all our number one story picks from 2025: longreads.com/2025/12/17/b...

"A stall in an aircraft is nothing to do with the engine, but means that there isn’t enough airflow over the wings to lift the plane. It will begin to fall, and once the speed of descent reaches a certain point it is unrecoverable." @newstatesman1913.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2...

Our 10 most popular editors' picks of 2025: longreads.com/2025/12/16/m... Featuring @newyorker.com, @nymag.com, @intelligencer.com, @bloomberg.com, @texasmonthly.bsky.social, @sfchronicle.com, @curbed.com, and @slate.com 🏆

"Shokuhin sampuru can be wondrously intricate: iridescent slivers of shrimp; striated sirloins with fatty crusts; bouncy poached eggs on the brink of first ooze." —Lauren Collins for @newyorker.com

"On the wall next to it, a sign read: 'When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher wall.'" @shannonheffernan.bsky.social and Julieta Martinelli for @themarshallproject.org/Latino USA/Futuro Investigates: www.themarshallproject.org/2025/12/05/i...

"Would they rather see the ashes or a faithful copy? Eighty per cent of respondents said the ashes." —Lou Stoppard for @economist.com

Our 2025 Best of series continues today with our Top 10 Original Stories. Here are the Longreads pieces that our readers loved most this year. longreads.com/2025/12/15/b...

"I wonder about inertia and all the forces that push back on these men as hard as they try to push into the direction of their desires." —Rebecca E. Williams in the Georgia Review

In this week's Top 5 : • Adobo vision (@theatlantic.com) • A tragic machine (@thefern.org) • Just Blaze (@oxfordamerican.bsky.social ) • The souls of others (@hazlitt.bsky.social) • The non-demise of film (@nybooks.com) longreads.com/2025/12/12/t...

"I’ve wondered what might happen if I narrow my lens: apply constraints to my days, focus on the choices that actually shape my world." In today's Year in Reading essay, @cherilucasrowlands.com acknowledges her limits: longreads.com/2025/12/12/r...

"Turning in isn’t turning away. It’s something more like attunement." @provenself.bsky.social shares his year in reading, highlighting Sarah Miller on ayahuasca therapy @nplusonemag.com, @chriscolin3000.bsky.social on total darkness @nytimes.com, and other #longreads: longreads.com/2025/12/11/i...

"Associational memory constantly runs along my periphery, as if the past is a TV always on in another room. It sings on the sidelines, buzzes, crackles. Sometimes you listen, sometimes you ignore it . . . The past is persistent." —Larissa Diakiw for @hazlitt.bsky.social hazlitt.net/longreads/so...

"In the Philippines, Jollibee is an institution; in America, it’s mostly just another chicken restaurant, and may never be destined to be anything more." @yeahyeahyasmin.bsky.social for @theatlantic.com: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

"Sometimes righteous and sometimes wrongous. Sometimes he glimpsed the cosmic and sometimes he fell in the shit." —David Ramsey on Blaze Foley for @oxfordamerican.bsky.social

"But amid trial and trauma—or perhaps even despite them—many of these stories dare to hope." Next up in our Best of 2025 series, editor Krista Stevens reflects on the stories she could not stop thinking about this year. longreads.com/2025/12/10/h...

We're sharing our favorite #longreads of 2025 over the next two weeks. Bookmark our Best of 2025 page to catch up on the latest year-end essays and lists of notable editors' picks: longreads.com/best-of-2025...

"Digital twins are palliatives — they treat the symptoms, not the causes, of flagging productivity growth." Max Hancock for @thedriftmag.com: www.thedriftmag.com/model-employ...

"We are surrounded by more than darkness, and transformed by more than violence." Next up in our "Best of 2025" series, Brendan Fitzgerald considers his year in reading longreads.com/2025/12/09/w...

"We need to figure out what’s the analogue to healthy soil for an economy." Christine Ro interviews John Fullerton for @atmosmag.bsky.social: atmos.earth/climate-solu...

"Dropping prerecorded, improvised solos into carefully worked-out backdrops was, in theory, a supreme creative balance of control and spontaneity." @musicclerk.bsky.social on Steely Dan for @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

"An ability to see through zealotry and self-involvement, to reject the solipsism of self-actualization and the crassness of materialism, is a positive response, and often a generative one." —Amanda Fortini on Generation X for T Magazine

"Politics and economics were set aside in favor of granular stories—ones that reveal the overlooked gears of society, the jobs we rarely think about." —Carolyn kicks off our "Best of" package with a look at her year in reading. longreads.com/2025/12/08/c...

Here's what we've got in our weekly Top 5: * Appeal of the surreal @equatormag.bsky.social * Decoding AI dreck (NYT Magazine) * Goop relations @nplusonemag.com * Learning to think @bostonreview.bsky.social * Pigeon racing pitfalls @parisreview.bsky.social longreads.com/2025/12/05/l...

"Did women have no choice, Wilcox wondered, but to wander the world hoping never to step on a landmine of a man?" Read an excerpt from Christa Hillstrom's @atavist.com story about a nurse's quest to document the life and death of every woman killed by a man in the US. longreads.com/2025/12/04/f...

"All we needed was a poem, a few hours each week, and trust in what we could do, in what we did do, together." @johannawinant.bsky.social @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

“I believed my #worth depended..on my #physical #capabilities. I may not have said it explicitly back then, but I feared I would lose that worth if I gave those things up, if I did something as ordinary as having a #child.”: buff.ly/kI2Xud3 via @longreads.com #SelfWorth #motherhood

"It seems we've reached the point in our relationship with celebrities where we just want to throw stuff at them . . . Like sending a satellite through a blackhole or petting a squirrel. It just seems worth a try." — @misternagel.bsky.social for Dirt

"Just as the sun begins to peek over the flat horizon of Coon Rapids, Iowa, 1,383 pigeons fill the sky." —Oliver Egger for @parisreview.bsky.social www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/11...

"It was fine for me to lie by omission in order to report a story. But this was something different: I was no longer going to pretend to be a believer. I was going to pretend to believe." —Chandler Fritz for @countyhwy.bsky.social

"I’ve learned the same lesson about desire again and again. Doing something I’ve dreamed of doesn’t necessarily check something off the list as much as it adds several more items to it." For Longreads, Diana Saverin confronts the costs of motherhood. longreads.com/2025/12/02/e...

"I found Fisher’s approach totally uncynical. His mission statement is simple and, in its simplicity, quite radical: We should enter conversations not to prove but to learn something." —Lamorna Ash for @thedialmag.bsky.social www.thedial.world/articles/new...

"It’s easy to project our fantasies onto a past that we can’t quite remember. The ad is seductive but transparent. We don’t believe the copy, but appreciate its innocence." —M.P. Kennedy for @publicbooks.bsky.social

I will never get tired of seeing Hanif Abdurraqib's writing show up at @longreads.com. Kudos @provenself.bsky.social and team on this series. longreads.com/2025/11/20/s... #longreads

"I look at that, and I have affection for a young man. It’s a Saturday night, and I’m at a typewriter with the fucking headphones on. I’m putting in the work. I’m doing it."— @themountaingoats.bsky.social's John Darnielle to Grayson Haver Currin for @GQmagazine.bsky.social

"Being a foodie is no longer about experience and knowledge. Documentation is in; expertise is out, even if we can all cite Bourdain explaining that Sichuan food with Coke is the best way to cure a hangover." @aliciadkennedy.bsky.social @yalereview.bsky.social yalereview.org/article/alic...

This week's Top 5: * Metal medicine, @highcountrynews.org * Hyped humanoids, @harpers.bsky.social * Carnival crossroads, @bittersouth.bsky.social * Divine defiance, @placesjournal.bsky.social * Optimization obsession, @aeon.co longreads.com/2025/11/21/t...

"Everything means something: if you close a window, you are trying to protect the group. If you’re sleepy, it’s because the group is making you sleepy. You do not have food poisoning; you have group poisoning." — @lilyscherlis.bsky.social for n+1

"Yes, all of these things fade, and you step into the sun which, in a moment, will become a storm. But surely you wouldn’t swear off the sun for the rest of your life, would you?" Hanif Abdurraqib on Sade's album "Promise," 40 years later. longreads.com/2025/11/20/s...

"The Moscow crew shipped off all those pizzas and 20 cases of Pepsi to the parliament building, to fortify Yeltsin and his supporters against the coup. Antoniadi had inserted Pizza Hut into a political crisis." —Kelly Jones & @joshuablevin.bsky.social for @slate.com

"A printed diary held out the promise of total control over time, place and the self." Elena Mary for @aeon.co: aeon.co/essays/victo...

America's liminal wetlands don't just persist, writes Ashley Stimpson. They insist. Today's inspiration for flagging resilience comes from a place you might not expect. longreads.com/2025/10/02/t...

"We tried to pin down what it was about Fire in the Mountains that still had us sobbing intermittently a week out. Von Till nailed it: 'It made me dare to hope.'” @btoastie.bsky.social @highcountrynews.org www.hcn.org/issues/57-11...

"I think of the strata of the city and how its new skyscrapers are built on the bones of the old docks." @jesstraynor.bsky.social for @thedialmag.bsky.social: www.thedial.world/articles/new...

"The shipworms are many things at once. They have carried different names — from maritime menace to indigenous delicacy to scientific marvel — yet none alone captures their multitude." @crystalcchow.bsky.social for The Contrapuntal: thecontrapuntal.com/are-these-cl...

"Actually preventing cancer—far preferable to curing it, if less interesting—would mean asking why our cancer rates are so high in the first place." —Sofi Thanhauser for @vqr.bsky.social