Best Long Reads and Long-Form Articles on the web • Discoverology

Long Reads

Read the best long reads from around the internet, including outstanding long-form articles leading publishers like The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, LA Times, Washington Post and many more.

I Tried AirBnb's Zaniest Online Experiences

I Tried AirBnb's Zaniest Online Experiences

Apps, Long Reads

Could the company’s latest play to own the experience economy transport me virtually around the world? I made sangria with drag queens in Portugal, meditated with sleepy sheep in Scotland, and visited stray dogs in Ukraine to find out just how far Zoom-powered travel could take me.

How Facebook Works For Trump

How Facebook Works For Trump

Long Reads, Media, Politics

During the 2016 election cycle, Trump’s team ran 5.9 million ads on Facebook, spending $44 million from June to November alone. He won the presidency by using the social network’s advertising machinery in exactly the way the company wanted. He’s poised to do it again.

Inside Google's Civil War

Inside Google's Civil War

Business, Long Reads, Tech

With its “Don’t be evil” mantra, Google was a central player in creating the rosy optimism of the tech boom. Some employees say Google is losing touch with that motto. What happens when an empowered tech workforce rebels?

Inside X, Google's Top-Secret Moonshot Factory

Inside X, Google's Top-Secret Moonshot Factory

Innovation, Long Reads, Science, Tech

Within Alphabet, Google’s parent company, it is grouped alongside Deepmind in “Other Bets”, although in that metaphor, X is more like the gambler. Its stated aim is to pursue what it calls “moonshots” – to try to solve humanity’s great problems by inventing radical new technologies.

Life Under The Algorithm

Life Under The Algorithm

Business, Economics, Life, Long Reads

Increase your output, get paid more. Wages go up with productivity. Until, it turns out, they don’t anymore. The unwinding of this agreement in recent decades, such that workers must continue to produce more without expecting it to show up in their pay stubs, has now been the subject of a good deal of discussion and debate.

Bashir Sultani

Inspiration
Bashir Sultani
Will Upzoning Neighborhoods Make Homes More Affordable?

Will Upzoning Neighborhoods Make Homes More Affordable?

Cities, Economics, Long Reads

Housing affordability is a growing issue in America, and there’s a battle over how to fix it happening on blocks across the country. Zoning—the rules that govern how cities use their land—is on the front line. Cities and states across the country are proposing new upzoning laws to combat the housing crisis. Will they work?

The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew

The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew

Long Reads, Tech

How an insecure, acid-dropping hippie kid reinvented himself as a technological visionary – and changed the world. He rewrote the rules of business, combining Sixties idealism with greed-is-good capitalism. He never did anything first, but he did it best.

The Data That Turned The World Upside Down

The Data That Turned The World Upside Down

Long Reads, Media, Politics, Tech

How Cambridge Analytica used your Facebook data to help the Donald Trump campaign in the 2016 election. A then little-known British company sent out a press release: “We are thrilled that our revolutionary approach to data-driven communication has played such an integral part in President-elect Trump’s extraordinary win.”

The Preposterous Success Story Of America’s Pillow King

The Preposterous Success Story Of America’s Pillow King

Business, Long Reads

The tale of Mike Lindell begins in a crack house. The 47-year-old divorced father of four had run out of crack, again. He realized that abusing crack and running a business weren’t compatible in the long term and vowed to fulfill his dream of making “the world’s best pillow.”

The Empty Houses That Foreign Aid Built

The Empty Houses That Foreign Aid Built

Long Reads, Nature, World

After the devastation of the 2004 tsunami, aid agencies promised to rebuild Indonesia “better.” Fifteen years later, their failures are all too obvious. The disaster hit Aceh the hardest. The evacuation buildings are unmistakably the shiniest features of the city’s newly built landscape.

How Our Home Delivery Habit Reshaped The World

How Our Home Delivery Habit Reshaped The World

Business, Long Reads, Tech

The great trick of online retail has been to get us to do more shopping while thinking less about it – thinking less, in particular, about how our purchases reach our homes. This divorce of a product from its voyage to us is perhaps the thing that Amazon has sold us most successfully.

The Secret History Of A Cold War Mastermind

The Secret History Of A Cold War Mastermind

History, Long Reads

The legend of Gus Weiss, hero of the Cold War, ends 11 stories below the balcony of his condo at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC, on November 25, 2003. A broken corpse on the sidewalk. He was a shrewd intelligence insider, pulled off an audacious tech hack against the Soviets in the last century. Or did he?

How The English Language Is Taking Over the Planet

How The English Language Is Taking Over the Planet

Long Reads, World

English is everywhere, and everywhere, English dominates. From inauspicious beginnings on the edge of a minor European archipelago, it has grown to vast size and astonishing influence. Almost 400m people speak it as their first language; a billion more know it as a secondary tongue. Is there any point in resisting?

How Eliud Kipchoge Broke Running’s Mythic Barrier

How Eliud Kipchoge Broke Running’s Mythic Barrier

Long Reads

It was one of sport’s great question marks: Is it humanly possible to run 26.2 miles in under two hours? Then Eliud Kipchoge did it. What followed was international fame—and plenty of controversy. GQ flew to Kipchoge’s ultra-rarefied Kenyan training ground to meet the man who pulled off the impossible.

Nikolay Schegolev

Inspiration
Nikolay Schegolev
Why Do We Work So Hard?

Why Do We Work So Hard?

Business, Economics, Health, Long Reads

Work, in this context, means active, billable labour. But in reality, it rarely stops. It follows us home on our smartphones, tugging at us during an evening out or in the middle of our children’s bedtime routines. It becomes our lives if we are not careful. It becomes us.

Ponzi Schemes, Private Yachts, And A Missing $250 Million In Crypto: The Strange Tale Of Quadriga

Ponzi Schemes, Private Yachts, And A Missing $250 Million In Crypto: The Strange Tale Of Quadriga

Business, Crime, Long Reads

When Canadian blockchain whiz Gerald Cotten died unexpectedly last year, hundreds of millions of dollars in investor funds vanished into the crypto ether. But when the banks, the law, and the forces of Reddit tried to track down the cash, it turned out the young mogul may not have been who he purported to be.

Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide

Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide

History, Long Reads

In the water park business, Jeff Hendry was considered a genius of sorts. He often said that his goal in life was to make customers of his family’s legendary water parks happy—“to put a smile on their faces, to give them a thrill or two.” It was a beautiful vision. Until it went horribly wrong.

'The Intelligence Coup Of The Century'

'The Intelligence Coup Of The Century'

Crime, History, Long Reads

For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company, Crypto AG, to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA.

The Saga Of Punkin’ Donuts

The Saga Of Punkin’ Donuts

Business, Long Reads

The Dunkin’ Donuts that used to be at the northwest corner of Belmont and Clark earned its nickname in the 80s and 90s. How a doughnut-shop parking lot became a confluence of Chicago youth subcultures—and what killed it off.

The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan… Stalin Did

The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan… Stalin Did

History, Long Reads

The US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender.

Michael Crichton

Inspiration
Michael Crichton
Lives Adrift In A Warming World

Lives Adrift In A Warming World

Long Reads, Nature, Photos, World

If the Earth’s average temperature increases 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100, humankind will see catastrophic changes. For millions of people, this extreme warming is already reality, in places like Qatar, Colorado and Angola. And Aaliyah, at the age of 9, has become a climate refugee in Newtok, Alaska.

What Happened When Tulsa Paid People To Work Remotely

What Happened When Tulsa Paid People To Work Remotely

Business, Long Reads

Traditionally, cities looking to spur their economies may offer incentives to attract businesses. Tulsa is testing out a new premise: Pay people instead. The first class of hand-picked remote workers moved to Tulsa in exchange for $10,000 and a built-in community. The city might just be luring them to stay.

How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation

How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation

Health, Life, Long Reads, Psychology

We’re spoiled, entitled, lazy, and failures at what’s come to be known as “adulting,” a word invented by millennials as a catchall for the tasks of self-sufficient existence. I couldn’t figure out why small, straightforward tasks on my to-do list felt so impossible. The answer is both more complex and far simpler than I expected.

The Man With The Golden Airline Ticket

The Man With The Golden Airline Ticket

Long Reads

My dad was one of the only people with a good-for-life, go-anywhere American Airlines pass. Then they took it away. This is the true story of having—and losing—a superpower.

The Art Of Losing Friends And Alienating People

The Art Of Losing Friends And Alienating People

Life, Long Reads, Psychology

Our culture long ago made peace with the fragility of matrimony, but we still have high expectations for friendships. If you really care about someone, you should be able to pick up where you left off, no matter how long it’s been. Friendship’s something you don’t really lose, right?

Faith, Friendship, And Tragedy At Santa Fe High

Faith, Friendship, And Tragedy At Santa Fe High

Long Reads

Sabika Sheikh, a Muslim exchange student from Pakistan with dreams of changing the world, struck up an unlikely friendship with an evangelical Christian girl. The two became inseparable—until the day a fellow student opened fire.

The Forgotten Tiger King Of Harlem

The Forgotten Tiger King Of Harlem

Long Reads

Antoine Yates spent three years living peacefully inside his New York City apartment with his ‘roommate’ — a 450-pound Siberian tiger named Ming. Until, that is, Ming’s animal instincts kicked in and he mauled Yates in the middle of their kitchen.

The Green Dream Of Portland

The Green Dream Of Portland

Cities, Long Reads

Decades ago, Portland, Oregon established an image as the most environmentally friendly city in the world. But is the progressive city’s progress still too slow? “We haven’t done a good enough job of influencing the thousands of new people who have moved here, making it clear to them that biking and walking are the way to go.”

The Case Against Boeing

The Case Against Boeing

Business, Economics, Long Reads

In the wake of the 737 MAX disasters, caused by a software feature, Boeing and regulators initially placed blame on the planes’ pilots. Since Samya Stumo’s death in a 737 MAX crash, her parents and her great-uncle, Ralph Nader, have devoted themselves to proving that the company put profit over safety.

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