The best longform journalism we consumed this week

Welcome to The Long Story, the weekly newsletter where we curate the best longform journalism on the internet. If you want this newsletter landing in your inbox every Friday, click on this handy little button:

Let’s jump into it…

Here Come the Lionfish

20 million years ago, the shifting tectonic plates sealed off the Indian Ocean from the Mediterranean Sea, which led to the evolution of new fish species in each. But the building of the Suez Canal opened a waterway that allowed Indian Ocean species to navigate up north. One of the those species — the lionfish — has become a prime target for eradication, whether it's through hunting tournaments or mass food harvesting. “What you’re hunting isn’t prey—it’s the enemy.” [Emergence Magazine]

Can Salt-Loving Crops Such as Quinoa Help Save Our Food Supply?

As sea levels rise due to climate change, more and more of our soil will become saturated with salt, making it inhospitable to most modern day food crops. To adapt to this trend, farmers are planting halophytes, which are nutrient-rich plants that can grow in or near oceans. It's safe to say that these plants will make up an increasingly large portion of our diet over the next 50 years. [Scientific American]

YouTube at 20: How the Video Colossus Launched the Creator Economy and Turned From Hollywood Foe to Friend

It's hard to overstate how much YouTube changed the trajectory of the internet. Prior to its launch, most video had to be self-hosted, and any surge in traffic could easily crash a website. What's more, it was the first major tech platform to adopt the ethos of sharing revenue with content creators. The Creator Economy would be nowhere as big as it is today if it weren't for that then-radical decision. [Variety]

I Survived Downhill Skiing’s Rowdiest Party

There's a famous ski race in Austria where competitors reach speeds of up to 90 miles an hour. Winning the race is more coveted than an Olympic gold medal, and celebrities travel from all over the world to watch it. For many attendees, however, the true draw is the absolute drunken debauchery that follows the event. [Outside]

The Miraculous Life of Shane DiGiovanna

Millions of Americans are understandably angered by the Trump Administration's war on science, but recent events have been especially horrifying for those with rare genetic diseases who have spent their entire lives hoping for medical science to find a cure. I can't even imagine what it must be like to learn that the most promising studies are at risk of being put on ice for at least the next four years. [The Bulwark]

The Tale Of The Early-Round KO Of Muhammad Ali’s Champburger

You've probably noticed that many of the world's biggest creators now run their own food brands — MrBeast with Feastables, Logan Paul and KSI with Prime, Emma Chamberlain with her coffee, the list goes on. What you may not know is that this is a trend that dates back decades, long before the rise of the Creator Economy. Back in the 60s and 70s, for instance, celebrities kept launching their own fast food chains, almost all of which have been relegated to the ash heap of history. [Defector]

Geothermal Power Is a Climate Moon Shot Beneath Our Feet

What if the key to a carbon-free future was inside us all along? And by “inside us,” I mean below the crust of the earth, where temperatures are hot enough to generate all the energy we could ever need. The only problem is that we need to figure out how to reliably drill through miles and miles of rock first. [New Yorker]

What Was A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?

I remember devouring A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in college and the extent to which it was unlike anything I had ever read before. Its meta humor and self-flagellation just felt so refreshing and electric. The book was a mega bestseller, transforming Dave Eggers into an overnight literary sensation. It also inspired an entire generation of younger writers, many of whom went on to write their own bestsellers. [Slate]

Inside the Plastic Industry’s Battle to Win Over Hearts and Minds

With the public growing increasingly panicked about the prevalence of microplastics, many cities and countries across the world are considering completely banning single-use plastic products. Alarmed by this trend, a plastics industry group has begun paying influencers to post barely-disclosed sponcon that touts the recyclability of plastic — this despite the fact that the vast majority of plastic goods aren't recycled. [NYT]

PR's fiercest pitbull

One of the most sought-after PR consultants in Silicon Valley thinks it's a waste of time to constantly pitch traditional news outlets on coverage; instead, she usually encourages her clients to "go direct," which basically boils down to creating their own content and distributing it on social media. This often then leads to organic coverage from the legacy news media. [Business Insider]

The secret economics of Dungeons & Dragons

In the early 2000s, the company that owned Dungeons & Dragons essentially made the game open source, meaning that fans could create derivative works without fear of reprisal. The move rescued the game from obscurity and birthed an entire economy of creators who produce D&D-themed products and content. [Phil Edwards]

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Inside the White House’s new media strategy to promote Trump as ‘KING’

More than any other administration in history, the Trump White House has become its own media outlet. In the past, the communications staff served mostly as a liaison between the president and the traditional press, but Trump's team prioritizes rapid-response content production that can be pumped out through its own channels. [WashPo]

A Tiny Press Took a Big Risk on Experimental Books. It Paid Off.

A fast-growing publisher found a competitive edge by seeking out obscure, non-English novels and translating them for UK and American audiences. The key to its success is providing readers a window into other cultures that isn't reflected in most Western literature. [NYT]

Alien Pleasures

Romantasy is one of the fastest-growing sub-genres in book publishing. What's particularly notable about it is its consistent depiction of graphic interspecies sex, which some theorize allows a mostly female audience to fantasize about a world where current gender norms no longer exist. "Women want something different from their relationships with men. So different that it can only be figured as alien." [Defector]

The Diabolical World of Phone Scams

We live in the golden age of scam artists. There's probably not a week that goes by in which every single person in the modern world doesn't receive at least one phone call, text message, or email attempting to drain their bank accounts. It's a pure numbers game; 99% of these attempts will be unsuccessful, but it only takes a scammer catching you at the exact right moment just as your guard is down. Many of those who lost their life savings always assumed they'd be able to spot a scam a mile away. In some countries like India, scamming has become so professionalized that it's now considered a white collar job. [Maclean’s]

Do Democrats Need to Learn How to Build?

The single greatest mistake urban liberals made in the last 100 years was putting up countless roadblocks to new building development. It fueled the current housing shortage, stymied economic growth, and pushed millions of Americans into a state of near constant anxiety as living costs swallowed up a higher and higher portion of their takehome pay. [New Yorker]

Rifling Through the Archives With Legendary Historian Robert Caro

As America's most famous biographer, Robert Caro has spent most of his life rifling through archives, so much so that he's amassed a massive archive of his own. Now, that archive is housed at a New York museum, and it's a safe prediction that historians will continue rifling through it for centuries. [Smithsonian]

The Oil Industry’s Big Bluff

The oil companies know that much of their future profits will need to go toward cleaning up their drilling sites, so they're trying to cash out now, basically by borrowing against those future profits and distributing the money as dividends. The idea is that they'll all just eventually declare bankruptcy, leaving the government — ie taxpayers — to pay for all the cleanup. [Powering the Planet]

Dead Athletes. Empty Stands. Why Are We Paying Billions to Keep This Sport Alive?

Every year, the horse racing industry generates billions of dollars — not from its actual fanbase, which is tiny, but from rent-seeking carve-outs that are written into law. Basically, a percentage of all gambling income is funneled into a sport that often struggles to attract more than a dozen spectators to its events. It's arguably one of the biggest wastes of public tax dollars. [NYT]

The End of Children

The book The Population Bomb was published in 1968 and warned that the exponential growth of humanity would essentially drain the world of its resources within the next hundred years. Little did the authors know that, by the time of publication, population growth had already peaked. Now, nearly every nation on earth is facing steep population decline in the near future. Nowhere is this scenario more starkly felt than in South Korea, where schools are rapidly closing because they no longer have enough children to populate them. [New Yorker]

The Job Market Is Frozen

On the surface, the American economy looks solid, with historically low unemployment and steady GDP growth. But at the same time, white collar workers, particularly those entering the job market out of college, are finding it almost impossible to even get employers to respond to their applications. The entire private sector is pretty much in a holding pattern as it waits to see what havoc the Trump administration will wreak on the economy. [The Atlantic]

My other newsletter: Why a successful food creator quit her popular YouTube channel

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