In this nuanced essay for Seattle Met, Allecia Vermillion writes about what it’s like to raise a family when your partner lives with hearing loss. After a few minutes she told us he had passed his hearing screen. That’s when I heard the sound of crying. Not the infant kind. Across the dark room, Seth’s breathing was ragged. A few sobs escaped...

What does it mean when someone says a dessert is “not too sweet”? For older generations of the Asian diaspora, it might be a comment of the highest praise. For younger Asians and Asian Americans, perhaps it’s a mark of maturity (and a sign that they’re becoming their parents). For Eater, Jaya Saxena unpacks this common phrase, which is a lot more complicated...

Indigenous communities have long relied on the far north’s caribou herds for sustenance. But the herds are disappearing, and there’s not a clear cause of the decline, nor is there a remedy: To anyone who lives south of the Arctic Circle the problem can seem abstract—another distant note of sadness in an era heavy with extinctions. But this...

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers. This week we’re featuring stories about restorative justice, donated bodies allegedly sold at Harvard, an ER doctor who recognized her own catastrophic symptoms, a fascinating career pivot, and chimpanzees on the lam. 1. After the Hit-and-Run...

What’s the weirdest chip flavor you’ve ever tried? For me, it was one that supposedly tasted like a spicy German sausage, and it seems to have been available only for a limited time, and only in Southeast Asia. How does that make sense? How does anything about the global distribution of chip flavors make sense? Amelia Tait talks to the world’s foremost...

Jason Diamond’s younger years were culinarily magical: a neighborhood full of first- and second-generation immigrants meant that going to his friends’ houses exposed him to food from all over the globe. One food in particular, a Bukharan dish whose actual name he didn’t even know, turned him into a garlic lover. Years later, living in New York he went...