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

It’s been a big week for us The Lazy Reader! Our fledgling reading community was featured in The Electric Typewriter, which is one of the cornerstones of longform reading on the Internet. We’re still on the front page as of the moment, but here’s the link to the post. It’s such an honor. 🙇‍♂️

And if, for whatever reason, you haven’t heard of them yet, give TETW all the love! They do such good work.

Anyway, we’re extra pumped this week and I think our reading list reflects that. I’d say that the stories this week are extra gripping and emotional and so worth the time. And the topics are more diverse than usual, too. I’ve been having way too much fun digging through old longform stories and I think that’ll show in this week’s list.

Some standouts:

• The crazy operation to get rid of Pablo Escobar’s hippos, which are on a warpath across Colombia’s ecosystem.

• This well-known accessibility-in-gaming advocate passed away. She might not have been real.

• This couple who decided to conquer the pains of death by… dying together.

• The organ-harvesting “doctor” that took advantage of India’s poor and desperate.

As with last week, please let me know what you think of the list this week by voting in the poll below.

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Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

PS — A huge thanks to 1440 Media for supporting this week’s newsletter! It’s the perfect reading companion to The Lazy Reader. They give you intelligently curated reading list, giving you a well-rounded, holistic view of current affairs.

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Story in Spotlight

Just a word of caution upfront: If you cry easily, don’t read this in the gym like I did. You’ll get a lot of worried looks from everyone.

That said, this is one of my all-time absolute favorites. I first read this a few years back and I’ve made it a point to re-read it every couple of months. It’s the perfect blend of tragic and heart-warming, inspiring and heart-breaking.

The story itself is the stuff of movies. After finding out that he’d never fulfill his dream of going to space, Rob Meline settled for the next best thing: Being an educator and awakening the love of outer space in generations of children. He soon became much-loved in his community and was well-known as a source of inspiration, despite apparently having a troubled family life.

And when tragedy hit, Rob’s vocation would turn out to be the exact thing that he needed to fulfill his astronaut aspirations, after all.

I’m purposefully trying to be vague here because I don’t want to sully the experience of reading the story for you. If you have a few extra minutes to spare this week, please give this one a shot. Trust me.

And just a quick comment about the process here: The reporting here is great, as is to be expected from The Seattle Met, but it’s the writing that in my opinion truly takes the story to the next level. The prose is elegant and the structuring is smart, which overall builds just enough tension and clues the reader in to what the entire thing is about.

Not too long. I always take just around 20 to 25 minutes to read through this. Which is well-worth your time. I promise you’ll enjoy this story.

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The Longform List

👑 The Downfall of India's Kidney Kingpin | Discover Magazine, $

This was a very close second-place mostly because this was a story that I wish I could have written. In a past life, I was also reporting the underground kidney trade, but none of the big magazines would spare time for a pitch from a newbie from the Global South. I’m sure I could dig up my research from that time if I tried.

In any case, this is a really exhaustive investigation, looking at how a rogue Indian doctor (not really a doctor) was able to exploit the country’s incompetent legal system to keep his organ harvesting operations afloat. And what a morbid operation it was. The writer tracks down victims who said that they were coerced into giving up their kidneys, while some didn’t even know that their organs were taken during other procedures. It’s a crazy ride.

Definitely worth a read, though a bit long. Probably 35 minutes.

🥀 The Frontier Couple Who Chose Death Over Life Apart | Outside Online, Free

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (for avid readers of TLR): Death has been on my mind a lot recently and it’s been giving me a lot of anxiety. And as a solutions-oriented person, I’ve been thinking about possible ways to try and regain some agency over mortality. That might be a bit too hubristic, but that’s the reason why there have been so many stories like this on the newsletter.

This one, I think, is the bravest account of it so far. While others have tried to claim ownership of their deaths by specifying the limits of clinical intervention, the people at the center of this story worked outside of the limits of medicine entirely. I’d never considered that before.

Pretty long, but I honestly didn’t feel the story pass by. Maybe 25 minutes? 

🌟 At 99, a St. Petersburg Man Finds Meaning in the Working Life | Tampa Bay Times, Free

This one might not even qualify as longform, but it’s a really emotional story that follows the life of a 99-year-old who is so dedicated to his work and the so-called American values that he carries. So much so that it can only seem that he’s found his life’s purpose in living humbly and sweeping away at a parking lot with his broom. It’s infectious and inspiring.

And I tried to be extra critical of this story—"isn’t it a bit too dystopian, too utilitarian, too capitalistic,” so my thinking went, “that a 99-year-old still has to work? That we glorify this?”—but honestly it’s just a really nice, heartwarming story that tugs at so many complex emotions.

Not long at all. 10 minutes.

💥 The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist | WIRED, $

There are only a few crime stories that have stuck with me throughout the years and this is one of them.

There’s just something so twisted about the treasure hunt element of this robbery-turned-murder that I don’t think has been replicated in any other big crime story yet. (Feel free to prove me wrong though!) And, unsurprisingly, the cast of characters behind the crime was just as twisted, just as morbidly fascinating.

Pretty long, but I found it to be exciting at all turns. Maybe 30 minutes if you can stay focused. 

🦛 Pablo Escobar’s Abandoned Hippos Are Wreaking Havoc in the Colombian Jungle | Smithsonian Magazine, Free

This is one of those stories that opens with a wild premise and then just keeps going. Hippos that somehow found themselves in Colombia because of Pablo Escobar’s extravagance are now posing a destructive threat to the local ecosystem, and scientists are resorting to increasingly extreme measures to prevent catastrophe.

The details of their attempts only make this story even more outlandish.

Very long. I’d allot maybe 45 to 50 minutes for it because not everyone finds ecology stories as fascinating as I do.

📣 Israel Is Buying Google Ads to Discredit the UN’s Top Gaza Aid Agency | WIRED, $

There’s been a couple of stories like this in recent months, but WIRED seems to have pushed the investigation much further, looking at how the government of Israel uses the Google Ads machinery to spread harmful lies against U.N. agencies—all with the tacit permission of the tech giant. The specifics of the investigation are even more unbelievable in the most infuriating ways possible.

It really makes you wonder why all these supposedly powerful people in the world are all so passive and permissive when it comes to Israel.

This is our signature TLR rage-read for this edition, so if anger is a driving force for you, this won’t take long at all. I think I finished this in 15 minutes.

⚖️ Stop Using the Term ‘Centrist’. It Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Does | The Guardian, Free

This is yet another story that might not even be longform.

The writer makes the case that the word Centrist excessively smoothes out a lot of nuance that is otherwise important in political discourse. That’s especially true these days, when there’s not one clear definition of what any political faction stands for.

Instead, the writer advocates bearing things out in precise and exact language. A person’s stances on things like Ukraine or Palestine or immigration or student debt is more important than their self-professed political labels.

Not too long. No more than 10 minutes if you can stay on it.

♿ A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed. | IGN Southeast Asia, Free

I adored this story. It’s not everyday (or every week, for that matter) that a gaming outfit like IGN runs a really good, in-depth story like this one. And shining a kind and compassionate spotlight on the accessibility movement in gaming is certainly a brave choice for IGN.

The story itself is impressive. The writer picked up on something that an entire community apparently did not, and reported it out wonderfully, while also being careful of the sensitivities of people living with disabilities. Big props to IGN for commissioning a disabled journalist to write this story. I wish our industry gave more opportunities like these to disadvantaged writers.

Not too long, and the subject itself is moving. I’d commit 25 minutes or so.

🏜️ Death Dust | The New Yorker, $

I was sitting on a science writing panel a few years ago and the speaker before me told the class: “Science isn’t sexy,” by which she meant that readers typically find science stories boring. And as science writers, she continued, it’s our job to make it exciting without compromising technical accuracy or making readers feel dumb.

By that metric, the writer of this story did an incredible job. I’m hard-pressed to think about something less gripping than a desert fungal infection, but this story had me hooked from the first paragraph. I’ve re-read it a couple of times to try and find what it is that makes the story sing, but I’m convinced that there’s just some sort of magic in her prose, made even more formidable by her air-tight research.

Very long, but if you’re a science nut like me, you’ll find the entire experience very enjoyable. I’d say commit 1 hour for this story.

🍆 The Other Drug War: Inside the World of Counterfeit Viagra | MEL Magazine, Free

I’ve always wondered about the men’s health startups that I’ve been seeing (more and more, it feels like) on social media. They confidently advertise selling drugs like Viagra online, seemingly without fear of being flagged by regulators and other authorities.

Apparently, as this story uncovers, there’s a big and thriving industry supplying those operations, which would make it really easy for these brands to just sprout somewhere else if, in case, they get shut down. And clearly, the demand is there, too. As the writer argues, patients would much rather risk buying counterfeit and likely ineffective Viagra than suffer through the shame of telling their doctors that they’re having problems in the bedroom. I’d argue that’s the bigger question here.

Not long. Maybe 15 minutes. 

Around the world

Here are some of the most important/interesting/infuriating news bits from around the world last week:

1 - On needless wars:
+ Ukraine continues its counter-offensive against Russia, keeping the military giant in check in the Kursk region.
+ On the backfoot, Russia pulls back its planes. But analysts caution against excessive optimism just yet.
+ Israel also continues its attack on the West Bank. 10 Hamas operatives were reportedly killed.
+ Months of genocide has left 40,000 Palestinians dead. This piece from Al Jazeera helps visualize how massive that scale is.

2 - Meanwhile, despite this blatant violation of human rights, New York University has updated its student handbook to classify Zionism as a protected category.
+ Students who protest against Zionism will be breaking the school’s code of conduct.

3 - Co-founder of popular encrypted messaging app Telegram has been arrested in France in connection with alleged illicit activity on the platform.

4 - In South Korea, women are seeking help from the international community amid the proliferation of Telegram channels where thousands of men share illicit photos of women.
+ Victims include friends and family of the men in these chatrooms, as well as minors.
+ Photos were taken without consent, sometimes when the women were asleep or drugged.
+ The channel also includes deepfake porn.

5 - An Austrian surgeon agreed to let his daughter carry out a procedure.

6 - Amid a new surge in COVID-19 cases, a county in New York has banned the use of face masks.
+ Violators risk up to $1,000 in fines or imprisonment.

7 - Mariah Carey’s mother and sister have died on the same day.
+ The singer’s relationship with her family has been complicated.

Thanks for reading! Please, please reach out if you have feedback, suggestions, or questions. I know some of the stories I recommend might be behind paywalls, and maybe I can help you with access to those, too!

Until next Monday! 👋