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We’re back again with another reading list of some of the best longform journalism across the internet ✨

2025 took no time at all to ramp up, huh? Work was immediately hectic for me and I was forced to hit the ground in a sprint. I didn’t even get the chance to warm my brain up first.

Not complaining, though! I’m always thankful for an abundance of work. That said, reading proved difficult for me last week. I’m lucky that I was able to stockpile a few stories from my year-end break, though that didn’t really change the fact that I finished far fewer longform stories than I had wanted.

I have a lot of catching up to do for next week’s email, is what I’m trying to say.

In any case, my reading slump shouldn’t be too obvious from today’s list. Quite the opposite, actually: I’m proud of what I managed to assemble this week. There’s a pretty good mix in there of deep, hard-hitting stories and light-hearted palate cleansers. All, as usual, should help prompt a healthy bit of philosophizing and introspection.

Here’s a quick peek:

• Two women pirates that carved our their place in history.

• The exploitation at the heart of the global sugar industry.

• Moderate politics silently turning San Francisco into a millionaire’s dream.

I’m still actively seeking out feedback regarding our graphics change. Do you like these new photo headers better? Or should I go back to our usual GIF banner? Let me know what you think by replying to this email!

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

PS - Thanks again to 1440 Media for sponsoring this week’s edition! Please consider visiting their site by clicking the link after the fold. It’s free and a great way of supporting TLR.

Story in Spotlight

January 11, Saturday, was the Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the U.S., a domestic effort spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security to bring attention to the trafficking crisis, and to help potentially rally support for a solution.

TLR is not based in the U.S., but we understand that trafficking is urgent, exploitative, and deadly. It is also complex, multi-dimensional, and cross-border. So we want to do our part.

This story from 2017 is one of the most clear-eyed and nuanced accounts of trafficking that I’ve ever read. I personally think that it could have done more to shine a light on the powers-that-be that drive trafficking, but still. It goes much farther than most other stories on trafficking do.

Ben Taub (a force of nature, if you ask me), follows the flow of trafficking from Nigeria through several other African countries and cities, ending in Italy and other European nations. Traffickers paint these destinations as utopic, luring their victims with the promise of gainful opportunities and the chance to lift their families out of oppressive poverty. Many people fall for the ruse, of course, and pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars that they don’t have to send one of their own on abroad. A worthwhile investment, so the thinking goes.

But the truth falls painfully short of the promise. Girls who choose or are forced to make this perilous journey end up as sex workers, not just in Italy but at almost all points along the travel. They have to give up their bodies and innocence, often seeing dozens of clients in a day, for payment that essentially amounts to loose change. (It’s often girls who are trafficked, not men, partly for this reason).

It’s a brutal system, yes, but it also risks being over-simplified. It’s easy to blame everything on the traffickers (who are, to be clear, definitely a big part of the problem). But what sets this New Yorker story apart is its willingness to concede that trafficking has become an unfortunate but central part of the economy in many of these African communities. It’s been a truth of life for so long that a fledgling market has sprouted around it—complete with competition. According to the traffickers themselves, cracking down on trafficking will only push the practice underground and farther into the territory of rebels and terrorists. Methods will become much more dangerous, and victims will be exposed to much more harm.

The story stops short of recommending a solution, which I think is a result of it being a journalistic product. Still, it’s clear that surface-level answers won’t be enough. They rarely are, after all. The approach has to be systemic.

Very, very long. But also very important. Definitely carve out an hour, at the very least, for this story.

The Longform List

🕵 The Case of the Vanishing Blonde | Vanity Fair, $

I’m increasingly being made aware that there is this whole sub-genre of True Crime stories that read extremely like mystery fiction. Are there any more of these out there? Please send them all my way.

Because what the hell! This story is so good. It sets up a really compelling mystery and then drip-feeds you details and puts you alongside the detective as he chases leads and figures out who could have done the crime and how. And the pay-off is really satisfying, too. The writer did incredible work here—so much so that I’m convinced he needs to write his own mystery novel.

Very long, but also very gripping. Maybe 30 to 40 minutes.

🏴‍☠ The Revenge of Anne & Mary | Truly*Adventurous, Free

No misses yet from Truly*Adventurous.

This story has a very interesting premise. It follows two women who bent the will of the world to follow their desires and become pirates—at a time when women were expected to be docile housewives and serve as glorified property for their husbands. They then take it one step further and even weaponize their femininity to slow down the wheels of justice. I adored this story so much.

And this article also reminded me that it’s completely possible to produce a top-notch piece of longform journalism almost entirely from archival sources. Now, that’s obviously not going to be ideal for stories that deal with current affairs, but it’s still an encouraging thought—especially for reformed journalists like me.

Long, but not excessively so. Maybeee 30 minutes tops? 

🏡 Surviving on $1,800 a Month in Social Security, She Died Looking for a Place to Live | Capital & Main, Free

Capital & Main is such an incredible discovery for me. I only found out that this outfit even existed when this story got recommended to me by a reader. (Aside: feel free to send in your recommendations by replying to literally any of my emails!) I’ve been craving for a media outlet that focused on money and corporate greed for so long.

In any case, in the U.S., there are few areas more apt to illustrate that than housing—many have called the housing situation in the country a “crisis” and, as this story bears out, it can have very fatal consequences. The forces behind this are very powerful, but also very amorphous, making it difficult to pin them down in concrete ways like a feature article or a lawsuit or an investigation. But I hope Capital & Main and other publications continue to do the work.

Long and heavy. Can be difficult to read. I’d say set aside 50 minutes at least, breathing breaks included.

🏛️ The Shadowy Millions Behind San Francisco’s “Moderate” Politics | The New Republic, Free

Been a while since I last read something from The New Republic—and I forgot how left-leaning they can get. No complaints, though.

In this story, The New Republic tries to get at the truth of the recent news barrage about how awful San Francisco has become. In the process, the writer finds out that while there is a kernel of truth to all the reports, it still is, apparently, overblown. More to the point, I guess: It’s being overblown by this network of non-profits (which deny that there’s a concerted effort) funded by a handful of billionaires. Their objective is immediately clear: to establish and maintain an anti-progressive political environment and groom SF into their real-estate cash-cow.

When I was starting out as a reporter, I was always told to “follow the money,” which I had always thought to be vapid advice. Because duh, of course follow the money. But this story is a prime example of that adage in action.

Long and honestly can get dragging toward the end with all the details and names and figures. Commit at least 45 minutes to make room for distractions.  

👩🏻‍⚕️ How Did a Surgeon in Florida Mistake a Man’s Liver for His Spleen? | New York Magazine, $

TIL: “Never events” are medical complications, often with fatal consequences, that should theoretically happen extremely rarely, but are actually more common than we think—so much so that the phenomenon has been given a name.

To say the absolute least: that’s worrying. And even more troubling is that this isn’t common knowledge. Does that mean that people who undergo surgery, for instance, or otherwise expose themselves to the medical industry, do not completely understand their risks? I’m no healthcare contrarian (I work in biotech) but that’s got to be ethically questionable right?

Maybe this is something I can look into for a future piece. If I ever get back to longform writing, of course.

Not too long, honestly, and can be very emotional. I’d say 30 minutes tops.

📞 ‘I’m stuck. Get me outta here!’ | Financial Times, $

I found this one to be surprisingly pleasant. For a story centered around being trapped in an elevator (one of my many, many fears), this piece wasn’t as harrowing as I imagined it would be. There’s a lesson to be learned here, for sure, about anxiety and blowing scary thoughts way out of proportion. Apt, because the story touches on that a bit, too.

But instead of focusing on people who get trapped in elevators (and on the human dimensions of fear as a phenomenon), this story instead trains its lens on the team of women—often volunteers, all of them mothers—who field panicked distress calls. It’s yet one of those invisible jobs that keep modern society moving, yet remains severely under-supported. But while these women go uncompensated, they continue to keep these call centers going, instead enjoying the community and break of pace that the job offers.

Surprisingly warm, for all the wrongness surrounding it.

Not too long, and generally easy to read. 30 minutes. 

🥤 The Brutality of Sugar: Debt, Child Marriage and Hysterectomies | The New York Times, $

This story, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of warm and pleasant. The headline should have given that away, at the very least.

Diving deep into the rural communities of India, The NYT traces the exploitative and bloody origins of the sugar that makes up the bulk of that can of Coke or Pepsi. It finds a deliberately convoluted system that disavows itself of any responsibility for the countless abuses along the vlaue chain: Children married off to serve as essentially slaves in sugarcane plantations, girls and women forced to have their uterus removed just so they can work more days, and entire communities buried in unending cycles of debt and servitude.

What really strikes me about these stories is the corporate white-washing. Coca Cola and PepsiCo, along with other business giants in the sugar space, are shielded from much of the blame, even if they reap most of the benefits of this extractive system. Even The NYT follows the companies’ misdirection, following the trail of outsourcing down increasingly minor service providers. Meanwhile, these multinationals pocket billions annually and continue to accumulate not just wealth but also soft power. It’s an insane system.

Very long, very infuriating, very difficult to read. Commit an hour.  

🍟 Why Is the American Diet So Deadly? | The New Yorker, $

Not to reveal my hand too much here, but I’ve been sitting on a food-themed reading list for what’s now been months. This story sort of makes me glad that I dragged my feet with that idea.

In recent months, I’ve been reading a lot about these ultra-processed foods, which has made me realize that even if I try to stay on top of my diet (being mindful of calories and macros and stuff like that), I still apparently have this glaring blind spot.

All this reading has also shown me how organized Big Food is—and that there even is a Big Food to begin with. I mean I always knew that there was major money behind the food industry, but not to the extent that they’d be able to discredit and hijack legitimate scientific discourse. Maybe I’ll share some of those readings in the coming weeks.

Not too long. Maybe 25 minutes or less if you can stay focused. 

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Until next Monday! 👋