The rebuild of our publication pages continues… this time we’ve updated our collection of the best writing from the New York Times. As always, let us know what you would add.

So What if They Have My Data? by Hana Lee Goldin - Who’s buying our personal information, what they’re using it for, and how the system works behind the screen

The Wired Guide to Protecting Yourself From Government Surveillance by Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman - Steps you can take to evade digital surveilance

What If It All Came Out? by Bridget Read - We’re each attached to years of texts, searches, and photos, an archive of humiliation that could detonate at any time

How to Disappear by Benjamin Wallace - Inside the world of extreme-privacy consultants, who, for the right fee, will make you and your personal information very hard to find

The Quantum Apocalypse Is Coming. Be Very Afraid by Amit Katwala - What happens when quantum computers can finally crack encryption and break into the world’s best-kept secrets?

Crooks’ Mistaken Bet on Encrypted Phones by Ed Caesar - Drug syndicates and other criminal groups bought into the idea that a new kind of phone network couldn’t be infiltrated by cops. They were wrong—big time

Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets by Andy Greenberg and Matt Burgess - With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data

Why Do We Care So Much About Privacy? by Louis Menand - Big Tech wants to exploit our personal data, and the government wants to keep tabs on us. But “privacy” isn’t what’s really at stake

On the Grid​ by Zoë Hitzig - How surveillance became a love language

Dark Matter by Meg Bernhard - For twenty years, PostSecret has broadcast suburban America’s hidden truths—and revealed the limits of limitless disclosure

How the Pentagon Learned to Use Targeted Ads to Find Its Targets—and Vladimir Putin by Byron Tau - Meet the guy who taught US intelligence agencies how to make the most of the ad tech ecosystem, “the largest information-gathering enterprise ever conceived by man.”

Big Data by Tim Harford - Are we making a big mistake?

Should We Be Worried About Computerized Facial Recognition? by David Owen - The technology could revolutionize policing, medicine, even agriculture—but its applications can easily be weaponized

Let us know we missed!

We’ve also updated our list of the best essays from Aeon magazine with stacks of outstading writng about science, psychology, sociecty, the environment and more.

And we’ve added a couple of amazing essays to our collection of the best writing by John Jeremiah Sullivan:

Horseman, Pass By by John Jeremiah Sullivan - Glory, grief, and the race for the Triple Crown

Man Called Fran by John Jeremiah Sullivan - Plumbing, the depths

We’ve updated our collection of the best writing from The New Yorker, with links to more than 100 new and classic articles and essays, plus author pages for our favourite New Yorker writers. As always, the list is a work in progress, so please let us know what we missed.

Illustration by Julie Benbassat/courtesy of Narratively

Narratively is a diverse and vibrant space that elevates the art of nonfiction storytelling -- helping emerging writers find their voice, and offering them a unique platform to publish their work alongside some of the best in the business. We asked Executive Editor Jesse Sposato to pick her favourite essays from the site:

Homeless at ‘Harvard High School’ by Heather K.M. Lewis - I spent my coming-of-age years in the New York City shelter system while attending an elite private school. Almost no one knew what I was going through, or the toll it was taking, least of all me.

Diary of a Degenerate Gambler Turned Hollywood Writer by James McSherry - The lure of racetrack betting came early and hit hard, but before that, I dreamed of becoming an author. A chance encounter with one of my all-time heroes—and his belief in me—changed my luck forever.

How to Turn a Human Body Into Soil, and Other Things I’ve Learned by Mallory McDuff - After my parents’ tragic, untimely deaths, I began to teach—and learn alongside—my students about how our bodies can nourish the land after we die. What we saw empowered us all.

How a Black-Market IVF Drug Deal Helped Heal My Marriage by Angie Chuang - After failing to get pregnant, our financial and emotional reserves were depleted. An illicit transaction trading meds for cash at a suburban Starbucks was a surprising turning point.

A Freak Accident Brought Me Closer to My Domineering Dad by Ivy Eisenberg - One summer in my early 20s, my dad’s ‘brilliant idea’ quite literally set us both on fire—and changed our relationship forever.

I Was Drowning in My Marriage—An Impossible Crush Helped Save Me by Nikki Campo - It took seeing myself through someone else’s eyes to be able to realize my full potential and make the difficult choice I’d known I needed to make all along.

Black Girl, Blue Leotard: How My Ticket to Belonging Broke My Heart by Lisa Williamson Rosenberg - Lisa’s dance uniform was everything. She cherished it, wore it everywhere. Until, that is, she took a new dance class where she felt inferior and started to see things in a different light.

I Was the World’s Worst Cancer Mom by Elizabeth Austin - The cancer ward (and my Insta feed) were filled with picture-perfect moms moving heaven and earth for their sick kids. Meanwhile, I spiraled into heavy drinking, depression and self-destruction.

Letter to My Teenage Self: An Incarcerated Man Interrogates the Person He Once Was by Hector Ortiz - From his prison cell in Washington state, Hector Ortiz reexamines the traumas, hardships and bad choices that led to his lengthy sentence—and ultimately taught him about the man he needed to be.

Chaos and Noise: One Man’s Harrowing Stint in Solitary Confinement by Christopher Blackwell - Locked in the hole without explanation, Christopher Blackwell tries desperately to hold onto the pride and positivity he’s worked so hard to preserve.

The Paradox of a Fair-Skinned Black Girl in the Segregated South by Wylene Branton Wood - Wylene felt safe despite the burning cross on her lawn and the subtler affronts that colored her Arkansas childhood. She never expected her deepest trauma to be inflicted by someone of her own race.

I Was Taught to Hate My Lesbian Neighbors. They Took Me In Anyway. by Dena Landon - The summer my parents’ marriage was falling apart, my best friend’s two moms saved me—even though my dad said they were going to Hell.

How I Wrote Myself into a Real-life Romantic Comedy – That Turned into a Survivalist Thriller by Melissa Johnson - As a filmmaker, I thought I could write the screenplay for my own love life. When I got lost in a hailstorm at 12,000 feet, searching for my ex, I realized I desperately needed a new ending.

I Professed My Love at Mile 15...But Not to My Husband by Christine Ochs-Naderer - I married my childhood best friend when we were still young...then fell in love with my running partner. Welcome to a love triangle more intense than any marathon.

Queen of the S.R.O. by Ray W. Hayden - In gritty 1980s New York, one West Village flophouse became a last-chance refuge for addicts, criminals, LGBTQ runaways, and anyone with nowhere left to go. And my mom was their queen.

Visit Narratively.com for more great essays, and if you’re a writer looking to ‘hone your craft, and develop all the tools to pursue your writing and publishing dreams’ then check out Narratively Academy.

Just one link this time, but its a good one: all our favourite articles and essays from the first half of 2026. Let us know what we missed!

The Long Flight to Teach an Endangered Ibis Species to Migrate by Nick Paumgarten - Our devastation of nature is so extreme that reversing even a small part of it requires painstaking, quixotic efforts.

The Incredible Buddha Boy by George Saunders - A legend is growing in Nepal, where people say a meditating boy hasn’t eaten or drunk in seven months. He barely moves, just sits under a tree, still as a stone. It’s impossible, some say. Is it a miracle? A hoax? Let’s find out

Lost in the Taiga by Mike Dash - The amazing story of a Russian family that was cut off from all human contact for 40 years

The Secrets of the Wave Pilots by Kim Tingley - For thousands of years, sailors in the Marshall Islands have navigated vast distances of open ocean without instruments. Can science explain their method before it’s lost forever?

The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein - The disturbing tale of a boy “who attempted to build a nuclear breeder reactor in his mother’s potting shed as part of a Boy Scout merit-badge project” (and almost succeeded)

Woman Marries Snake by Mischa Berlinski - A peculiar Indian love story

The Last Meal by Michael Paterniti - A two-ounce songbird. A lemon-sized tumor. An imperial appetite for death, flesh, and the immortal gesture. It was time for dinner.

The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel - For nearly thirty years, a phantom haunted the woods of Central Maine

Naked, Covered in Ram’s Blood, Drinking a Coke, and Feeling Pretty Good By Andrew Solomon - One man’s journey to Senegal to investigate a tribal cure for depression.

In John They Trust by Paul Raffaele - South Pacific villagers worship a mysterious American they call John Frum - believing he’ll one day shower their remote island with riches

The Movie Set That Ate Itself by Michael Idov - A Ukrainian city, a cast of thousands, and a totalitarian society in which the cameras are always rolling and the actors never go home

Heard the One About the Rocket Car? Anonymous - What would do if you came across a surplus military solid-fuel rocket lying around the place? Strap it to an old Chevy adapted to run on rails and head for the nearest abandoned railway line, of course.

What Is Glitter? by Caity Weaver - A strange journey to the glitter factory

The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory by Charles Graeber - A man on a mission to break the 32 hour, 7 minute New York-to-Los Angeles cross-country driving record. Why? Why not?

Raiders of the Lost Backyard by Jim Windolf - The amazing adventure of two kids who decided to remake Indiana Jones

Story A, Story B by Gideon Lewis-Kraus - As soon as I heard about the Japanese hole-digging contest, I was going to find some reason to go

Inside West Bengal’s Booming Sound System Battles by Arielle Domb - Everything is really extreme. In one hour, I want to experience everything.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson - We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...

Inside the Bohemian Grove by Philip Weiss - A visit to the secretive summer camp where the world’s most powerful men meet up to pee on trees

If you have any other fantastical stories up your sleeve, drop us a line.

How to Be a Person by Lindy West

How to Pick Your Life Partner by Tim Urban

How to Be Single by Phoebe Robinson

How to Trust Your Future Self by Jeff Wise

How to Be Polite by Paul Ford

How to Do What You Love by Paul Graham

How to Disagree by Paul Graham

How to Sleep by James Hamblin

How to Tell When Someone Is Lying by Maria Konnikova

How to Walk Through Walls by Henrik Karlsson

How to See into the Future by Tim Harford

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

How to Bitchface by Tavi Gevinson

How to be a Rock Critic by Lester Bangs

How to Write A Love Poem by Jim Behrle

How to Land Your Kid in Therapy by Lori Gottlieb

How to Disappear by Benjamin Wallace

How to Be Blind by Andrew Lel

How to Spend 47 Hours on a Train and Not Go Crazy by Nathaniel Rich

How to Build a Perfect Refugee Camp by Mac McClelland

How to Use a Squat Toilet by Frank Bures

How to Get a Nuclear Bomb by William Langewiesche

How to Survive a Killer Asteroid by Cody Cassidy

Attitude by Margaret Atwood - You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality

The Capital T Truth by David Foster Wallace - The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness

How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett - You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life!

This Is the Life Annie Dillard - You enjoy work and will love your grandchildren, and somewhere in there you die

The Force That Drives the Flower by Annie Dillard - What is it about fecundity that so appalls? Is it that with nature’s bounty goes a crushing waste that threatens our own cheap lives?

Why Go Out? by Sheila Heti - At home, you can wear your pyjamas. When you’re out, you could be snubbed, or disappointed. The scotch is not cheap.

Delight by Ross Gay - Nourishing need, adult braces, and kissing a very small dog one million times

Scars by David Owen - A life in injuries

The Same River Twice by David Quammen - You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on. To most people it comes across as a nice resonant metaphor, a bit of philosophic poetry. To me it is that and more.

How Life Really Works by Philip Ball - Just as I uncovered a new way to understand life, I got news about my own

Does Life Have a Purpose? by Michael Ruse - Nobody expects atoms and molecules to have purposes, so why do we still think of living things in this way?

You Can Be a Materialist and Find Meaning in the Universe by Jessica Tracy - My hard-nosed materialism led me to an existential crisis, but then I realised the difference between science and scientism

The Futile Pursuit of Happiness by Jon Gertner - When it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, you are most likely wrong

The Radical Implications of Luck in Life by David Roberts - Acknowledging the role of luck is the secular equivalent of religious awakening

The Power of Feedback Loops by Thomas Goetz - Provide people with information about their actions in real time, then give them a chance to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors

Take the Easy Route by Jeff Wise - Change is hard. Everybody knows that.

Buy Experiences, Not Things by James Hamblin - New research builds on the vogue mantra of behavioral economics

Failure to Cope “Under Capitalism” by Clare Coffey - We have generational trauma. We are living through a global pandemic. We are literally neurodivergent and a minor. We are riddled with climate grief. We are, for one reason or another, unable to cope.

How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition by Daniel Markovits - Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out.

Why Does It Feel Like Everyone Has More Money Than You? by Jen Doll - Financial help from parents comes in many forms, and it’s the basis of so many success stories. So why do millennials act like it doesn’t exist? Jen Doll examines the myth—and tyranny—of the “self-made” success story.

When Are You Really an Adult? by Julie Beck - In an age when the line between childhood and adulthood is blurrier than ever, what is it that makes people grown up?

Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead by Chuck Klosterman - Zombies are like the Internet and the media and every conversation we don’t want to have

The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis by Jonathan Rauch - What a growing body of research reveals about the biology of human happiness — and how to navigate the middle age slump

The Day I Got Old by Caitlin Flanagan - It just suddenly happened, and there isn’t a sports car in the world I can buy to make it otherwise

My Taste Is Basic. So What? by Samantha Irby - How three simple words can stop judgmental friends in their tracks

In Praise of Being Washed by Zach Baron - Has a life of ambition and striving gotten the best of you? Do you sometimes wish you could give up a little—stop chasing so many pointless goals you probably won’t hit anyway?

Phoning It In by Stanley Bing - She gave me this long and involved story about a huge slight that was inflicted on her operation by some other entity someplace, and I was looking out the window and thinking, whoa, look at that BMW Z8

No One Cares! by Arthur C. Brooks - Our fears about what other people think of us are overblown

Click through to our full list of 100 Great Articles and Essays about Life!

On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion - The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it

Why I Write by Joan Didion - All I knew then was what I wasn’t, and it took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer.

Autobiographical Notes by James Baldwin - I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read

The Creative Process by James Baldwin - Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men avoid; the state of being alone

The Art of the Impersonal Essay by Zadie Smith - In my experience, every kind of writing requires some kind of self-soothing Jedi mind trick

That Crafty Feeling by Zadie Smith - “What I have to say about craft extends no further than my own experience, which is what it is - 12 years and three novels.”

Fail Better by Zadie Smith - Literature’s legacy of honourable failure

How To Write With Style by Kurt Vonnegut - Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it?

Despite Tough Guys, Life Is Not the Only School for Real Novelists by Kurt Vonnegut - Can you really teach anyone how to write?

Write Till You Drop by Annie Dillard - “Do you think I could be a writer?” “I don’t know. . . . Do you like sentences?”

The Nature of the Fun by David Foster Wallace - “A book-in-progress is a kind of hideously damaged infant that follows the writer around wanting love, wanting the very thing its hideousness guarantees it’ll get: the writer’s complete attention.”

Why I Write by George Orwell - From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer

Everything you Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes by Stephen King - I know it sounds like an ad for some sleazy writers’ school, but I really am going to tell you everything you need to pursue a successful and financially rewarding career writing fiction, and I really am going to do it in ten minutes

A Place You All Know Well by Michael Chabon - I’ve always felt that there’s a kinship between writers and explorers

Write Like a Motherfucker by Cheryl Strayed - Nobody is going to give you a thing. You have to give it yourself. You have to tell us what you have to say.

Why They Aren’t Writing the Great American Novel Anymore by Tom Wolfe - A treatise on the Varieties of Realistic Experience

The Secrets of Suspense by Kathryn Schulz - We love churning apprehension in fiction; we hate it in life. But understanding the most fundamental technique of storytelling can teach us something about being alive.

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book by Chuck Klostermann? - Does staring at a blank computer screen for two hours count as creativity?

The Ill-Defined Plot by John Jeremiah Sullivant - On the orgins of the essay

Mister Lytle by John Jeremiah Sullivan - When I was twenty years old, I became a kind of apprentice to a man named Andrew Lytle

Unspoken Truths by Christopher Hitchens - Until cancer attacked his vocal cords, the author didn’t fully appreciate what was meant by “a writer’s voice”

On Being a Woman Writer by Lidia Yuknavitch - A very smart man tells me the thing I have written is too much about my self. Too much “I.” Could I please write something else? Differently?

Annie Dillard and the Writing Life by Alexander Chee - Writers aren’t born, they’re made—from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine. And sometimes tutelage.

Thoughts on Writing by Elizabeth Gilbert - On disicpline, hard work, rejection and why it’s never too late to start

Uncanny the Singing That Comes from Certain Husks by Joy Williams - “Who cares if the writer is not whole? Of course the writer is not whole, or even particularly well...”

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination by J.K. Rowling - A commencement address

How to Win the Nobel Prize in Literature by Jim Behrle - So you didn’t win a Nobel Prize in Literature. I know, it’s total bullshit. You totally deserved it.

Let us know what we missed!

We’ve just updated our list of articles about mental health. Here are the new additions:

Why We’re Turning Psychiatric Labels Into Identities by Manvir Singh - So you’re on the spectrum, or you’ve got borderline personality disorder, or you’re a sociopath: once you’re sure that’s who you are, you’ve got a personal stake in a very creaky diagnostic system.

The Ones We Sent Away by Jennifer Senior - I thought my mother was an only child. I was wrong.

God Knows Where I Am by Rachel Aviv - What should happen when patients reject their diagnosis?

The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs by Rachel Aviv - Millions of Americans have taken antidepressants for many years. What happens when it’s time to stop?

The Secret, Magical Life Of Lithium by Jacob Baynham - One of the oldest, scarcest elements in the universe has given us treatments for mental illness, ovenproof casserole dishes and electric cars. But how much do we really know about lithium?

Tell Me Why It Hurts by Danielle Carr - How Bessel van der Kolk’s once controversial theory of trauma became the dominant way we make sense of our lives

What It’s Like to Live With One of Psychiatry’s Most Misunderstood Diagnoses by Maggie Jones- Spurred by her past struggles with dissociative identity disorder, she has devoted her professional life to studying it.

Mary Had Schizophrenia—Then Suddenly She Didn’t by Rachel Aviv - Some psychiatric patients may actually have treatable autoimmune conditions. But what happens to the newly sane?

The Geel Question by Mike Jay - For centuries, a little Belgian town has treated the mentally ill. Why are its medieval methods so successful?

A Diagnosis Can Sweep Away Guilt by Jack Goulder - The delicate art of treating ADHD

A Realistic Guide to Managing Your Depression by Brett and Kate McKay - The nature of depression is simply too complex to follow a nice, neat storyline

The Surprising Truth About Seasonal Depression by Maggie Mertens - That we’re all sad in winter is a common refrain, but some researchers are questioning the season’s psychological effects

The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls by Jonathan Haidt - The preponderance of the evidence suggests that social media is causing real damage to adolescent

My Addicted Son by David Sheff - A father’s Story

Me and My Girls by David Carr - Where does a junkie’s time go? Mostly in 15-minute increments.

Maylia and Jack by Lizzie Presser - A Story of Teens and Fentanyl

On Tilt by Jasper Craven - America’s new gambling epidemic

Check out the full list for more great writing. Let us know what we missed.

For the past 10 years, Article Club has been recommending great writing, interviewing some of the best authors in the business, and building a lively community of readers who meet up online and IRL to discuss great journalism.

The project is run by Mark Isero, who is currently having a break to ‘take stock and figure out Article Club’s next steps’. We managed to persude him to interupt his break and share his favourite articles and essays with us:

When Things Go Missing by Kathryn Schulz - Reflections on two seasons of loss

Twelve Minutes and a Life by Mitchell S. Jackson - Ahmaud Arbery went out for a jog and was gunned down in the street. How running fails Black America.

Baking Bread in Lyon by Bill Buford - For a newcomer to the city, a boulangerie apprenticeship reveals a way of life

All the Greedy Young Abigail Fishers and Me by Jia Tolentino - Writing college essays for Abigail Fishers was the only job I have ever been truly ashamed of, and I am so ashamed of it now that it hurts

What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind by Jennifer Senior - Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11

His Name Was Emmett Till by Wright Thompson - In 1955, just past daybreak, a Chevrolet truck pulled up to an unmarked building. A 14-year-old child was in the back.

Living in Adoption’s Emotional Aftermath by Larissa MacFarquhar - Adoptees reckon with corruption in orphanages, hidden birth certificates, and the urge to search for their birth parents

America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One by Nikole Hannah-​Jones - Black Americans are foundational to the idea of American freedom

What is Owed by Nikole Hannah-Jones - If true justice and equality are ever to be achieved in the United States, the country must finally take seriously what it owes black Americans

A Kingdom from Dust by Mark Arax - Stewart Resnick is the biggest farmer in the United States, a fact he has tried to keep hidden while he has shaped what we eat, transformed California’s landscape, and ruled entire towns

Wider than the Sky by Phyllis Beckman - The human brain weighs approximately three pounds, resembles nothing so much as a shelled walnut, and is the texture, one neurosurgeon tells us, of soft tofu

The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser - If there were a kind of rehab for people ashamed to have needs, maybe this was it

Faith, Friendship, and Tragedy at Santa Fe High by Skip Hollandsworth - 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 Sunset by Lisa Bubert - There are plenty of reasons to see nursing homes as sad, neglectful places. There are also reasons to see them as something else entirely.

Unspeakable Pain by Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas - What doctors don’t hear

Athens, Revised by Erin Wood - A month before I graduated from high school, I was learning to see my female body as more than just a vessel to resent and attempt to thin

The Abstract Rage to Protect by Amanda E. Machado - Throughout my twenties, I often dated men who loved in the same way: with a love language they perceived as protection, but often presented itself as violence

Judgement and Epiphany on Pittsburgh’s Number 79 Bus by Aaron Gilbreath - The seven stops on the bus lead one resident to an understanding about the way he views his neighbors

My Son, the Prince of Fashion by Michael Chabon - I took my son to Paris Fashion Week, and all I got was a profound understanding of who he is, what he wants to do with his life, and how it feels to watch a grown man stride down a runway wearing shaggy yellow Muppet pants

Lost in Summerland by Barrett Swanson - At the world’s largest gathering of psychics and mediums, two brothers confront a painful secret

Theater of Forgiveness by Hafizah Geter - Does forgiveness take advantage of my people?

The Spectacular Burnout of a Solar Panel Salesman by Brendan I. Koerner - He thought he’d make millions of dollars selling solar panels door-to-door. The reality was much darker.

Samantha, White Nationalist by Andrew Marantz - Becoming a member of the alt-right, it turned out, wasn’t exactly a process of logical persuasion. It was more like a gradual shift in your mental vocabulary.

Is This the End of Reading? by Beth McMurtrie - Students are coming to college less able and less willing to read. Professors are stymied.

Death by Gentrification by Rebecca Solnit - The killing that shamed San Francisco

Letter From Home by Kiese Laymon - I am currently succumbing to evil

On Witness and Respair by Jesmyn Ward - A personal tragedy

Head over to Article Club for more great recommendations, monthly discussions and author interviews.

Over the past weeks we’ve created new collections of the best work by some of our favourite journalists:

Steven Johnson’s writing takes you on a journey, whether he’s tackling the history of humanity, the dangers of invention or the workings of the brain.

Josh Dzieza wrote several of our favourite articles from the past few years, including classic pieces on AI, work, undersea cables, clouds and bees.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus covers urgent social issues, global challenges facing humanity and scientific controversies with rare nuance.

Derek Thompson offers fascinating takes on some of the biggest questions we face.

Brook Jarvis’ deep dives into ecology, climate science, and a whole range of other fascinating subjects are always worth exploring.

Andy Greenberg’s gripping reporting on digital crime, cyberwar and hacking is impossible to put down.

Plus we’ve updated a few of our exisitng author pages:

Kathryn Schulz’s writing is always full of immagination, whether she’s describing our impending doom, getting personal or ranking mythical creatures.

There’s a clarity to Zadie Smith’s prose, about joy, politics or writing, that keeps you captivated.

Jia Tolentino’s commentary on our bodies, hot-button issues and contemporary culture is second to none.

Philip Ball brings cutting-edge science, psychology and life itself to life.

Check out our full author menu for more great writing from the best in the business. As always, we’d love to know who we missed.

We’ve just updated our list of articles about AI. Here are the new additions:

What Is Claude? by Gideon Lewis-Kraus - Researchers at the company are trying to understand their A.I. system’s mind—examining its neurons, running it through psychology experiments, and putting it on the therapy couch

America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs by Josh Tyrangiel - Does anyone have a plan for what happens next?

Friend or Faux? by Josh Dzieza - What do you love when you fall for AI?

To Stay in Her Home, She Let In an A.I. Robot by Eli Saslow - At 85, Jan Worrell lived alone on a remote corner of the Washington coast. Could ElliQ become her companion?

The AI Doomsday Machine Is Closer to Reality Than You Think by Michael Hirsh - The Pentagon is racing to integrate AI into its weapons system to keep up with China and Russia. Where will that lead?

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Anonymous - Does the world really need another ‘The Case For Why AI Could Be Dangerous’ essay?

We Did the Math on AI’s Energy Footprint by James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart - The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next

You Sound Like ChatGPT by Sara Parker - AI isn’t just impacting how we write — it’s changing how we speak and interact with others. And there’s only more to come.

Why Does A.I. Write Like That? by Sam Kriss - Chatbots have developed a distinctive — and grating — voice

A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally. by Bill Wasik - The technology’s ability to read and summarize text is already making it a useful tool for scholarship. How will it change the stories we tell about the past?

The Great Fiction of AI by Josh Dzieza - The strange world of high-speed semi-automated genre fiction

AI Will Not Make You Rich by Jerry Neumann - The disruption is real. It’s also predictable.

This Is How the AI Bubble Bursts by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques - The tangle of AI deals among tech giants could be signs of dangerous overinvestment in the developing technology

Check out the full list for more great writing about AI. Let us know what we missed!

Last week the American Society of Magazine Editors announced the nominations for the National Magazine Awards 2026. Here are our picks from the longlist:

There Will Be No Mercy by Drew Philp - On the frontlines of the war in Ethiopia

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans by Jeffrey Goldberg - U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

Mary Had Schizophrenia—Then Suddenly She Didn’t by Rachel Aviv - Some psychiatric patients may actually have treatable autoimmune conditions. But what happens to the newly sane?

The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump by Masha Gessen - There are many good reasons to accommodate budding dictators, and only one reason not to: anticipatory obedience is a key building block of their power

The Wired Guide to Protecting Yourself From Government Surveillance by Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman - Steps you can take to evade digital surveilance

This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write by Taffy Brodesser-Akner - For years, my friend’s father asked me to recount his childhood escape from the Nazis. Why did it take me this long?

Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’ by Wired Staff - Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out tens of thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. The next step: Unleash the AI.

People With Parents With Money by Various Authors - 14 adults come clean about the down payments, allowances, and tuition payments that make their New York lives feasible

We Did the Math on AI’s Energy Footprint by James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart - The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next

America’s Hot Garbage Problem by Laura Bliss and Rachael Dottle - Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, and neighbors have been getting sick

The Goon Squad by Daniel Kolitz - Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation

The Year After my Son Died in Childbirth by Poppy Noor - After the tragedy, one question haunted me: how do you miss an unborn child?

Wild Birth by Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne - How mothers lost children after being radicalised by uplifting podcast tales of births without midwives or doctors

The Ethical Assassin by Brett Martin - One man’s quest for the perfect way to kill a fish

Click through for the full list of nominations.

We’ve updated our lists of articles about sex and love. Here are some new additions:

Want to Have Better Sex? Here’s How by Nicole McNichols and Anna Martin - After 15 years teaching a class about sex, the most popular course at the University of Washington, this professor shares her most important takeaways

A Woman’s Right to Say ‘Meh’ by Alana Massey - Being sex positive won’t guarantee you an orgasm

The Goon Squad by Daniel Kolitz - Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation

This Man Does Not Make Poppers by David Mack - For decades, poppers have been the go-to sex drug for gay men. But where do they come from?

The Nonstop Gay Sex Party on the Mexico City Subway by A.W. Strouse - The city’s metro hosts—and authorities unofficially sanction—a queer institution unlike any other.

Spermpocalypse by Rosecrans Baldwin - One man journeys through the many movements—sci-fi startups, DIY donor clubs, group masturbation retreats—urgently attempting to address the impending spermpocalypse.

Frigid by Jess E. Jelsma - On the internet, I read that vaginas can stretch to accommodate almost any reasonable thing...

Damage by Mariya Karimjee - When I was younger, someone took a knife to my clitoris and cut out a small but significant part of me. I blamed my mother. I despised her. I loved her.

Sex Without Women by Caitlin Flanagan - What happens when men prefer porn?

The Trouble With Wanting Men by Jean Garnett - Women are so fed up with dating men. So what do we do with our desire?

The Polycrisis by Brandy Jensen - Why can’t we stop talking about nonmonogamy?

The Paradox of Slow Love by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman - No one formula can guarantee love and lasting commitment, but “taking it slow” may be a losing strategy.

A Mini Tinder Time Capsule by Rachel Connolly - A decade of ghosting, emojis, and urban legends

On the Grid​ by Zoë Hitzig - How surveillance became a love language

Teens Are Forgoing a Classic Rite of Passage by Faith Hill - Fewer young people are getting into relationships

Friend or Faux? by Josh Dzieza - What do you love when you fall for AI?

For more great writing, check out the full lists of articles about sex and articles about love and relationships. Let us know what we missed.

We’ve just updated our list of 150 Great Articles and Essays, our attempt to bring together all the best writing from around the net on a single page. Obviously, there is more outstanding writing out there that we haven’t discovered yet, so if you have any favourites that we haven’t included, we’d love to hear from you.

And we’ve reworked out collection of articles about war, here are some new additions:

Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War? by Dexter Filkins - With global conflicts increasingly shaped by drones and A.I., the American military risks losing its dominance

Putin has Redrawn the World - But Not the Way He Wanted by Allan Little - We are living in new and more dangerous times

The AI-Powered, Totally Autonomous Future of War Is Here by Will Knight - Ships without crews. Self-directed drone swarms. How a US Navy task force is using off-the-shelf robotics and artificial intelligence to prepare for the next age of conflict

How Suicide Drones Transformed the Front Lines in Ukraine by C.J. Chivers - Outnumbered and desperate, the nation began hacking cheap consumer drones with explosives — bringing a brutal new form of violence to 21st-century warfare

AI Warfare Becomes Real for US Military With Project Maven by Katrina Manson - US military operators started out skeptical about AI, but now they are the ones developing and using Project Maven to identify targets on the battlefield

How an Entire Nation Became Russia’s Test Lab for Cyberwar by Andy Greenberg - Blackouts in Ukraine were just a trial run. Russian hackers are learning to sabotage infrastructure—and the US could be next

The Incredible Rise of North Korea’s Hacking Army by Ed Caesar - The country’s cyber forces have raked in billions of dollars for the regime by pulling off schemes ranging from A.T.M. heists to cryptocurrency thefts. Can they be stopped?

The Age of American Naval Dominance Is Over by Jerry Hendrix - The United States has ceded the oceans to its enemies. We can no longer take freedom of the seas for granted

How the US Created a World of Endless War by Samuel Moyn - In 2008, many of Barack Obama’s supporters hoped he would bring the global war on terror to a close. Instead, he expanded it.

Was it Inevitable? by Keith Gessen - A short history of Russia’s war on Ukraine

Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic by Ben Taub - For years, Russia has been using the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, which borders its nuclear stronghold, as a laboratory, testing intelligence operations there before replicating them across Europe

This Giant Microwave May Change the Future of War by Sam Dean - The defense tech startup Epirus has developed a cutting-edge, cost-efficient drone zapper that’s sparking the interest of the US military. Now the company has to deliver.

Screams Without Words by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella - How hamas weaponized sexual violence on Oct. 7

How Israel Has Made Trauma a Weapon of War by Naomi Klein - Memorials to the 7 October attacks use art, virtual reality and dark tourism to stir support for limitless violence.

Render it Unusable by Meron Rapoport and Oren Ziv - Israel’s mission of total urban destruction

How Two U.S. Soldiers Risked It All To Get Their Families Out of a War Zone by Stephen Rodrick - As America withdrew from Kabul and the Taliban moved in, two Afghanistan-born paratroopers pulled off the impossible

Double Blind by Matthew Teague - The untold story of how British intelligence infiltrated and undermined the IRA

Where the Bodies Are Buried by Patrick Radden Keefe - Gerry Adams has long denied being a member of the I.R.A. But his former compatriots claim that he authorized murder

Check out the full list of 50 Great Articles about War for more classic reporting, and our collection of 150 Great Articles and Essays for the best writing from around the net. Let us know what we missed.

We’ve updated our list of great articles about history. Many of the new additions explore the theme of human progress, so we thought we’d present them here, together with some classics from the list:

GDP by Oliver Kim - We really don’t know how good we have it

How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life by Steven Johnson - Between 1920 and 2020, the average human life span doubled. How did we do it? Science mattered — but so did activism.

The Real Reason Humans are the Dominant Species by Justin Rowlatt and Laurence Knight - Energy is the key to humanity’s world domination

The Birth of Religion by Charles C. Mann - We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.

The Case Against Civilization by John Lanchester - Did our hunter-gatherer ancestors have it better?

The Worst Mistake in History by Jared Diamond - Archaeology is demolishing the belief that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress

Beyond the !Kung by Manvir Singh - A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile and small-scale

A History of Violence by Steven Pinker - Believe it or not—and I know most people do not—violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence

Money ? Happiness. QED. by Bill McKibben - The formula for human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?

What We Get Wrong about Technology by Tim Harford - Forget flying cars or humanoid robots, the most disruptive inventions are often cheap, simple and easy to overlook

How the System Works by Charles C. Mann - An essay series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life — and what happens if we don’t maintain them

The Golden Quarter by Michael Hanlon - Some of our greatest cultural and technological achievements took place between 1945 and 1971. Why has progress stalled?

Why the Age of American Progress Ended by Derek Thompson - Invention alone can’t change the world; what matters is what happens next

We Should Fix Climate Change — but We Should Not Regret It by Thomas R. Wells - Climate change is a huge and urgent problem. It is natural to suppose that it is therefore a terrible mistake, an unforced error that we should regret and try to prevent ever happening again.

Plus a couple of interesting essays about scientific progress we recommended in December, in case you missed them:

On the Importance of Staring Directly Into the Sun by Adam Mastroianni - There’s something very weird about the timeline of scientific discoveries

The Third Magic by Noah Smith - A meditation on history, science, and AI

Click through for the full list of 50 great articles about history. Let us know what we missed.

We’ve just updated our list of 50 Great Articles about Money. Here are some new additions:

People With Parents With Money by Various Authors - 14 adults come clean about the down payments, allowances, and tuition payments that make their New York lives feasible

Why it Pays to be Privileged by Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison - Within Britain’s elite occupations, the advantages of class are still mistaken for talent

Billionaires Are Not Like Us by Alex Morris - They have fantasies of going to Mars, transhumanism, and superhuman AI. How the heck does someone get this way? And what does it mean for the rest of us?

The Haves and the Have-Yachts by Evan Osnos - Luxury ships attract outrage and political scrutiny. The ultra-rich are buying them in record numbers.

Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff - The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind

Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene by Caitlin Flanagan - Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality

The Airport-Lounge Wars by Zach Helfand - When you’re waiting for a flight, what’s the difference between out there and in here?

The Fake Poor Bride by Xochitl Gonzalez - Confessions of a wedding planner

What Goes Up by Andrew Lipstein - Does the rise of index funds spell catastrophe?

Slash and Burn by Alex Blasdel - Is private equity out of control?

The Man Who Moves Markets by Evan Hughes - Carson Block uses covert techniques to uncover fraud for profit. Now he’s under investigation himself. Is he the hero of Wall Street, or the villain?

Diamonds Are Bullshit by Rohin Dhar - Let’s agree that diamonds are bullshit and reject their role in the marriage process

The Crypto Story by Matt Levine - Where it came from, what it all means and why it still matters

Click through to the full list for more classic articles about money. Let us know what we missed.

Click through for all our favourite writing from around the net in 2025:

150 Great Articles and Essays from 2025 @ tetw.org

Plus the best collections of outstanding journalism from this year:

Links by Albert Chu’s Best of 2025

The Sunday Long Read’s Best of 2025

David Brooks’ Best Nonfiction Essays of the Year

Businessweek’s Jealousy List

The 2025 National Magazine Award Finalists

The Best of the Guardian Long Read in 2025

The Top Twenty-five New Yorker Stories of 2025

The Atlantic's Most Read Stories of 2025

Longreads’ Best of 2025

Links I Would Gchat You’s 20 Best Links of 2025

The Lazy Reader’s 25 for 2025

Special thanks to Mark Isero of Article Club, In Dark Trees, @NDGlongreads and the members of r/longform for all their recommendations.

If you’ve read something great that isn’t listed above, or if there’s a ‘best of’ list we’ve missed, please drop us an e-mail or add a link below in the comments.

We hope have a great start to 2026!

The final installment in our series of newsletters highlighting great science & technology writing from the past few years:

The Third Magic by Noah Smith - A meditation on history, science, and AI

On the Importance of Staring Directly Into the Sun by Adam Mastroianni - There’s something very weird about the timeline of scientific discoveries

If Not Darwin, Who? by Philip Ball - An alternative history of the great ideas of science

An Invitation to a Secret Society by Adam Mastroianni - Why you should be a lizard

The Meaning of It All by Richard P. Feynman - Thoughts of a citizen scientist

Machine Envy by Philip Ball - Giant instruments are giving us a sea of data. Can science find its way without any big ideas at the helm?

Beauty ≠ Truth by Philip Ball - Scientists prize elegant theories, but a taste for simplicity is a treacherous guide. And it doesn’t even look good

The Rise and Fall of Peer Review by Adam Mastroianni - Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that’s a great thing

Why Inventors Misjudge How We’ll Abuse Their Creations by Steven Johnson - On possibilities that somehow escaped our field of vision but that, in retrospect, seem glaringly obvious

Quantum Common Sense by Philip Ball - Despite its confounding reputation, quantum mechanics both guides and helps explain human intuition

Does Time Really Flow? by Natalie Wolchover - The laws of physics imply that the passage of time is an illusion. To avoid this conclusion, we might have to rethink the reality of infinitely precise numbers.

What Is the Future of Fusion Energy? by Philip Ball - Nuclear fusion won’t arrive in time to fix climate change, but it could be essential for our future energy needs

Dismantling Sellafield by Samanth Subramanian - The epic task of shutting down a nuclear site

A Strange Fascination by Zack Savitsky - Studies of exotic materials called “strange metals” point to a whole new way to understand electricity

The Secret, Magical Life Of Lithium by Jacob Baynham - One of the oldest, scarcest elements in the universe has given us treatments for mental illness, ovenproof casserole dishes and electric cars. But how much do we really know about lithium?

Click through for more great science & tech writing from aound the net. Let us know what we missed!