This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers. Jennifer Thuy Vi Nguyen | Longreads | June 11, 2024 | (5,230 words) Dad,  With our distance, what I miss most is our car rides. You listen to Little Saigon Radio on AM and I prefer to bypass radio frequency with my Spotify playlists....

This is the story of Debra Stevens, who found a second family amongst the elephants of Botswana. Complete with beautiful video clips, this piece immerses you into life at Elephant Havens, then threads back to a different journey of discovery back in Stevens’ home of Dallas, Texas. The mood turns sober when the young elephant stumbles out of...

Emma Copley Eisenberg calls out the publishing industry for weight prejudice in this fascinating essay. Reading the piece makes you will realize how few times you have experienced an overweight main character while reading fiction. And that will make you think. Thinness is routinely associated with morality and fatness with immorality. Characters...

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers. In the Top 5: How sickle cell patients are pressured into sterilization How opioid restrictions harm the terminally ill The enshittification of bowling The sudden ubiquity of steroids Why sperm is a hot commodity...

Whether or not you agree with the headline’s hyperbole, there’s no denying that steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs are more widespread than they’ve ever been—another foul tributary branching out from the social media cesspool. For GQ, Rosecrans Baldwin talks to the men and women who have taken the syringe route to Swollsville. Natty or not?...

Disney is a global cultural force. But in China, the Chinese population—not the company—sets the trends. At Shanghai Disney Resort, the most beloved character isn’t Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, or princesses like Ariel or Belle or Elsa, but instead LinaBell, a pink fox. For The Dial, Lavender Au writes about the culture of Disney in China, and how,...