Longreads

1 day ago | longreads.com | Cheri Lucas Rowlands

In 2025, an unusually high number of whales have washed up dead along the shores of the greater San Francisco Bay Area region—nine gray whales in just the past two weeks. The images are haunting: massive, graceful creatures decomposing on the sand. But Omnia Saed’s short yet poignant Atmos essay, accompanied by stunning photographs by Lena C. Emery, offers a kind of solace. Saed reframes the death of a whale not as an end, but as a beginning—and a boon to the deep sea.

3 days ago | longreads.com | Cheri Lucas Rowlands

For Phoenix New Times, Stephen Lemons unravels an intriguing true-crime mystery. Nineteen years ago, 46-year-old Keith King vanished from the small town of Seligman, Arizona. According to one account, he took off for a hike on May 7, 2006—and was never seen again. “It was as if he’d been beamed up by one of the extraterrestrials he believed in and sometimes believed himself to be.

4 days ago | longreads.com | Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Denver decriminalized psychedelic mushrooms in 2019, making it the first city in the US to ease restrictions on psilocybin. For 5280, Robert Sanchez reports on the latest developments in Colorado’s psilocybin movement, highlighting a team of University of Colorado Denver scientists leading one of the nation’s largest studies into the drug’s therapeutic and palliative potential. As Sanchez delved into the reporting, he found himself growing increasingly curious about the benefits of mushrooms.

4 days ago | longreads.com | Krista Stevens

For Alta Journal, Katya Apekinarecounts living through the Palisades and Eaton Fires that started in California on January 7, 2025. In a piece as evocative as it is apocalyptic, she recounts the flames through her window and the toxic smoke that blanketed the area during the fire and in the immediate aftermath. As a relative newcomer to Los Angeles, she finds that the disaster has forced her to reckon with the price she’s willing to pay to live in paradise. Things are OK/things aren’t OK.

5 days ago | longreads.com | Krista Stevens

In September, 1982, people were collapsing, falling into a coma, and dying in Chicago, Illinois, for reasons unknown. Two members of Janus family had died. A third member of the family was in a coma. Dr. Thomas Kim, Chief of Critical Care in the emergency room at Northwest Community Hospital couldn’t understand why young, seemingly healthy people were becoming catastrophically ill so suddenly. Was it botulism? Carbon monoxide poisoning?