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5 Great Essays about Death

How to Practice by Ann Patchett - I wanted to get rid of my possessions, because possessions stood between me and death

If My Dying Daughter Could Face Her Mortality, Why Couldn’t the Rest of Us? by Sarah Wildman - She turned to me and asked, “What if this is the best I ever feel again?” Three hundred and seventy-six days later, she was dead.

The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff Goodell - The story of a couple who died on a scalding hike with their one-year-old daughter

I Nearly Died Drowning. Here’s What it’s Like to Survive. by Maggie Slepian - On coming to terms with a near-death experience

A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing? by Jia Tolentino - What the death of a health-insurance C.E.O. means to America.

Plus click through for the full list of 30 Great Articles about Death

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40 Classic Articles that Became Films

Click through for a huge collection of cinematic nonfiction

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5 Great Articles about Climate Change

The Science of Climate Change Explained by Julia Rosen - Definitive answers to the big Questions

How Soon Might the Atlantic Ocean Break? by Sandra Upson - A gigantic, weather-defining current system could be headed to collapse

Has the Amazon Reached Its ‘Tipping Point’? by Alex Cuadros - Some Brazilian scientists fear that the Amazon may become a grassy savanna — with profound effects on the climate worldwide

What to Do with Climate Emotions by Jia Tolentino - If the goal is to insure that the planet remains habitable, what is the right degree of panic, and how do you bear it?

After Climate Despair by Matt Frost - The hope for a global conversion to austerity has failed to stop climate change. What comes next?

Plus check out the full list of 50 Great Articles about Climate Change

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Frank Bures' Favourite Articles

Head to our Substack for a list of all-time great articles chosen by Frank Bures, author of outstanding travel and adventure writing, plus classic articles about everything from stolen bikes that and penis theft (?!), to squat toilets and an epic canoe race on the Mississippi. Read all his best work here, and check out his new book about canoeing on the Mississippi and beyond.

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5 Great Essays about AI

The Future Is Too Easy by David Roth - There is something unstable at the most basic level about any space with too much capitalism happening in it

Wikipedia’s Moment of Truth by Jon Gertner - Can the online encyclopedia help teach A.I. chatbots to get their facts right — without destroying itself in the process?

AI Means the End of Internet Search as We’ve Known It by Mat Honan - Despite fewer clicks, copyright fights, and sometimes iffy answers, AI could unlock new ways to summon all the world’s knowledge

AI Has a Hotness Problem by Caroline Mimbs Nyce - In the world of generated imagery, you’re either drop-dead gorgeous or a wrinkled, bug-eyed freak

AI and the American Smile by Jenka Gurfinkel - How AI misrepresents culture through a facial expression

And check out our full list of great essays about AI

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5 Great Essays about Art

The Power of Exposure by Derek Thompson - Fame and familiarity — in art, music, politics

The Art of Rules by Sherri Irvin - Conceptual art often confounds. The key is to understand the rules of the artwork and the aesthetic experiences they yield

Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art by Ted Chiang - To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence.

Everyone’s a Sellout Now by Rebecca Jennings - So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?

Go Ahead and Ban My Book by Margaret Atwood - To those who seek to stop young people from reading The Handmaid’s Tale: Good luck with that. It’ll only make them want to read it more.

Plus 40 more great essays about art and culture!

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5 Great Essays about Love

What Romance Really Means by Heather Havrilesky - Long-married romance is not the romance of watching someone’s every move like a stalker, and wanting to lick his face but trying to restrain yourself

Against Chill by Alana Massey - In recent years, “chill” has become one of the most desirable qualities in a romantic prospect. But it is a garbage virtue that will destroy the species

This Was How Things Ended by Michael Hobbes - An essay about breakups

How to Be Single by Phoebe Robinson - How to be alone and only mildly hate and lukewarm love it

Tinder Hearted by Allison P. Davis - How did a dating app become my longest running relationship?

Plus 50 more classic articles and essays about love!

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5 Great Articles about Gametes

The Egg by Bloomberg Staff - A story of extraction, exploitation and opportunity

Unscrambling the Egg by Natalie Angier - Put a few adults in a room with a sweet-tempered infant, and you may as well leave a tub of butter sitting out in the midday sun…

The Doctor Is a Woman by Sloane Crosley - On the prospect of parenthood

You Wouldn’t Believe How Difficult it is to Buy Sperm by Danielle Elliot - It’s easier than ever for single women to have children on their own … or so I thought. Then began my $17,000 journey

Sperm Count Zero by Daniel Noah Halpern - Within a generation we may lose the ability to reproduce

Plus 25 more great articles about reproductive health

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5 Great Essays about Streaming

Casual Viewing by Will Tavlin - Why Netflix looks like that

Confessions of a Spotify Vandal by Andy Cush - A folk-pop mischief-maker who goes by Catbreath has collected hundreds of thousands of streams by giving his songs prankish titles like “Chill Music,” “Gym Bangers,” and “My Discover Weekly.”

The Ghosts in the Machine by Liz Pelly - Spotify’s plot against musicians

How Platforms Killed Pitchfork by Casey Newton - Critics were once our best guides to new music. Then came streaming and AI

Not Even Spotify Is Safe from AI Slop by Elizabeth Lopatto - How fake music targets real Artists

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The 100 Best Articles of 2024

As always, we spent 2024 searching the net to bring you the very best aritcles, essays and nonfiction. Now we've put together a huge list of the very best writing from last year. Enjoy!

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10 Great Articles about Money

If Every Day Is a Rainy Day, What Am I Saving For? by Samantha Irby - I know I should have invested in a sturdy pair of those bootstraps people who speak at graduation ceremonies are always talking about

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

America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny by Caity Weaver - The penny may seem like a harmless coin. But few things symbolize our national dysfunction more than the inability to stop minting this worthless currency

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

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Debt to Me by M.H. Miller - An American family’s struggle for student loan redemption

Millennials Will Be The Richest Generation Ever, but Who Gets That Wealth is Down to Luck by Martha Gill - While some will profit from inheriting their baby boomer parents’ property, others face an ever more unequal society

The Road to Auto Debt by Julie Livingston and Andrew Ross - Our cars, no matter how much we cherish them, hold us in social and economic custody

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?

Poverty isn’t a Lack of Character. It’s a Lack of Cash by Rutger Bregman - Our efforts to fight poverty are often based on the misconception that poor people must pull themselves up out of the mire. But the relentless struggle to make ends meet has serious effects on the brain

Bitcoin Is Ridiculous. Blockchain Is Dangerous by Paul Ford - The true believers won’t stop until they’ve remade the world. Some of it will be thrilling. Some of it will keep us up at night

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5 Great Articles about the High Seas

Alone at the Edge of the World by Cassidy Randall - Susie Goodall wanted to circumnavigate the globe in her sailboat without stopping. She didn’t bargain for what everyone else wanted

Were Pirates Foes of the Modern Order—or Its Secret Sharers? by Daniel Immerwahr - We’ve long viewed them as liberty-loving rebels. But it’s time to take off the eye patch

The Cloud Under the Sea by Josh Dzieza - The story of the people who repair the world's most important infrastucture

The Shipwreck Detective by Sam Knight - Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure—without leaving dry land

Monsterwellen by Donovan Hohn - How massive waves from out of nowhere can wreck the Behemoth container ships that keep global trade running

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10 Great Essays about Abortion

The Endgame in the Battle Over Abortion by Mary Ziegler - The arc of the fetal personhood movement signals where Republicans may be headed

Somewhere Worse by Jia Tolentino - We are entering an era not just of unsafe abortions but of the widespread criminalization of pregnancy

Is Abortion Sacred? by Jia Tolentino - Abortion is often talked about as a grave act. But bringing a new life into the world can feel like the decision that more clearly risks being a moral mistake

Your Body, My Choice by Dayna Tortorici - The movement to criminalize abortion

The List by Jason Fagone and Alexandria Bordas - It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now its tactics are resurfacing

We Do Abortions Here by Sallie Tisdale - “How can you stand it?” Even the client asks

Later Abortion by Missy Kurzweil - A love Story

My Abortion by Meaghan Winter - One in three women has an abortion by the age of 45. How many ever talk about it? New laws, old stigmas. 26 stories.

Fetal Distraction by Christopher Hitchens - On the tragic conflict between potential humans and existing ones

The Last Children of Down Syndrome by Sarah Zhang - Prenatal testing is changing who gets born and who doesn’t. This is just the beginning

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8 Great Essays about Social Media

The I in the Internet by Jia Tolentino - The Internet has gone from being a utopia where everything was possible to a place full of angry people obsessed with their own representation

The New Pornographers by Roxane Gay - It’s a TikTok world, creative and sprawling and strange and anarchic and tedious and gross and you can’t stop scrolling and you can’t stop looking and you just want more. So what’s the problem?

The Machine Always Wins by Richard Seymour - Social media was supposed to liberate us, but for many people it has proved addictive, punishing and toxic. What keeps us hooked?https://

My Instagram by Dayna Tortorici - We all die immediately of a Brazilian butt lift

The Age of Algorithmic Anxiety by Kyle Chayka - Interacting online today means being besieged by system-generated recommendations. Do we want what the machines tell us we want?

The Age of Instagram Face by Jia Tolentino - How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look

What Was Twitter, Anyway? by Willy Staley - Whether the platform is dying or not, it’s time to reckon with how exactly it broke our Brains

The Age of Social Media Is Ending by Ian Bogost - It never should have begun

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5 Great Articles about Internet Dirty Work

AI Is a Lot of Work by Josh Dzieza - As the technology becomes ubiquitous, a vast tasker underclass is emerging — and not going anywhere…

Road-Tripping With the Amazon Nomads by Josh Dzieza - To stock Amazon’s shelves, merchants travel the backroads of America in search of rare soap and coveted toys

Revolt of the Delivery Workers by Josh Dzieza - Exploited by apps. Attacked by thieves. Unprotected by police. The city’s 65,000 bikers have only themselves to count on.

I Went Undercover as a Secret OnlyFans Chatter. It Wasn’t Pretty by Brendan I. Koerner - Your online influencer girlfriend is actually a rotating cast of low-wage workers. I became one of them.

The Terror Queue by Casey Newton - These moderators help keep Google and YouTube free of violent extremism — and now some of them have PTSD

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7 Great Articles about Anxiety

Understanding the Anxious Mind by Robin Marantz Henig - Some people, no matter how robust their stock portfolios or how healthy their children, are always mentally preparing for doom. They are just born worriers

Surviving Anxiety by Scott Stossel - I've tried therapy, drugs, and booze. Here’s how I came to terms with the nation's most common mental illness

Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety? by Benoit Denizet-Lewis - Parents, therapists and schools are struggling to figure out whether helping anxious teenagers means protecting them or pushing them to face their fears

Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax by Alex Williams - Anxiety has become our everyday argot, our thrumming lifeblood

Constant Anxiety Won't Save the World by Julie Beck - Spreading fear and worry about issues you care about on social media can lead to burnout rather than action.

America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Derek Thompson - English-speaking teens are spreading their problems abroad

Fear as a Game by Elisa Gabbert - What can the philosophy of games tell us about our odd impulse to scare ourselves?

Plus 50 more great articles and essays about mental health