My favorite longform of 2025

Dear friends,

For more than a decade, I have ended the year by sharing my favorite stories by other writers. You can read my 2017-2024 picks here.

The lists are always subjective, but this year’s feels more subjective than most. 2025 brought us a wealth of good journalism and other nonfiction. Like all of us, I have had to read selectively. But I hope and believe you will find some treasures here. 

Most of the links should get you to the articles without paywalls. In some cases, I provided alternate links. One article, from The Flytrap, requires a paid prescription, and that would be a good way to support independent media. (Here’s a list of other small publications that could use your support.) 

At the bottom of this newsletter, you’ll see two podcast recommendations. You’ll also read some news about my recent Guardian story, just below the illustration of the drunk raccoon.

• Zohran Mamdani and Mahmoud Khalil Are in on the Joke
  Hanif Abdurraqib, The New Yorker
  On finding unity in both suffering and laughter. (Alternate link.)

• Decades Later, the Truth Behind a Grisly Mass Murder in El Salvador
  George Black, The New Republic
  The author obtained enough new evidence about the 1980 murder of four U.S. churchwomen to get to the bottom of who’s responsible.

• He’s dying. She’s pregnant.
  Ariana Eunjung Cha, Drea Cornejo, Jahi Chikwendiu, Dan Keating, and Julia Wall, The Washington Post
  Diagnosed at 25 with Stage 4 colon cancer, Tanner Martin wants to survive long enough to meet his daughter.

• Abandoned by Trump, a farmer and a migrant search for a better future
  John Woodrow Cox, Sarah Blaskey, and Matt McClain, The Washington Post
  JJ Ficken was promised a $200,000 federal grant to hire a Guatemalan worker, only to have the administration freeze the funds as "DEI."

• Being an Asian Southerner Means Being an Anomaly, Squared
  Thomas Dai, Electric Lit
  You can feel like an outsider and still miss the land.

• ‘If I Live to 25, I’ve Lived a Good Life’
  Hannah Dreier, The New York Times
  Firefighter Joel Eisiminger was denied benefits when, at 24, he developed a blood cancer linked to the benzene in wildfire smoke.

• Thomas Keller asked me to leave the French Laundry. It turned into my most extraordinary night as a critic
  MacKenzie Chung Fegan, San Francisco Chronicle
  Power plays and “apology truffles” at a Michelin-starred restaurant. (Alternate link.)

• Anatomy of a Riot
  Sean Flynn, GQ
  A terrible crime in the north of England fueled a far-right conspiracy.

• The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
  Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic
  National security leaders included the magazine’s editor in a group chat about planned military strikes in Yemen.

• The Coming Election Mayhem
  David Graham, The Atlantic
  Donald Trump’s plan to subvert the midterms is already under way.

• The Robin Hood of For-Profit Education
  Christine Grimaldi, The Flytrap
  Matriculating at the University of Phoenix under her father’s name was a way for the author to repay him for all of his hard work. But she could only take him so far.

• The Fire of Freedom
  Erika Hayasaki, Men’s Health
  As he fought the Los Angeles wildfires, Fausto Lopez also battled for a second chance.

• The Unforgotten
  Tom Junod, ESPN
  Two high-school quarterbacks, two fatal injuries, decades apart.

• One Vigilante, 22 Cell Tower Fires, and a World of Conspiracies
  Brendan I. Koerner, Wired
  The author won the confidence of a 5G conspiracy theorist who’s serving time for arson. There's a cameo appearance by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Alternate link.)

• His wife was dying, his federal job crumbling. It tested his faith — in God and Trump.
  Hannah Natanson, The Washington Post
  Edward Brandon Beckham tried three times, unsuccessfully, to take the government's deferred resignation offer while his wife was in hospice.

• Mother of the Sitcom
  Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker
  Before there was Lucille Ball, there was Gertrude Berg. Her McCarthy-era fall is a cautionary tale for today. (Alternate link.)

• The Worm Hunters of Southern Ontario
  Inori Roy, The Local
  The writer plucks nightcrawlers to document the final wiggles of a once-thriving business.

• Tight Quarters
  Jordan Salama, The New Yorker
  A journalist embeds with 12 Ecuadoran immigrants sharing a Queens apartment. (Alternate link.)

• Circles of life
  Robert Samuels, The Washington Post
  When a week of jubilation turned tragic, generations of figure skaters discovered something new about the nature of their sport.

• The Pigeon Heist
  Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post
  How million-dollar racing birds became the target of organized crime.

• Across the Gulf
  Stephania Taladrid, The New Yorker
  Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum tries to manage the demands from D.C.—and her own country’s fragile democracy. (Alternate link.)

• The Anti-Social Century
  Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
  Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics, and our relationship to reality.

• ‘You can let go now’
  Line Vaaben, The Guardian
  Inside the Danish hospital where staff treat fear of death as well as physical pain.

• Where Do Trans Kids Go From Here?
  Emily Witt, The New Yorker
  “There’s nowhere to go in this country that’s safe,” said one mom. “I think that’s a fallacy that blue-state people have.” (Alternate link.)

• Stay Strong, My Brother
  Elliott Woods, Texas Monthly and Food and Environment Reporting Network
  Inside the deadliest immigration-related disaster in U.S. history.

• My mom and Dr. DeepSeek
  Viola Zhou, Rest of World
  The author’s mother, who lives in China and has chronic kidney disease, relies on an AI chatbot for (often bad) medical advice. 

Plus, an update on my Guardian story:

This year I collaborated with journalist Jocelyn C. Zuckerman and editor Mike Hudson on an investigation of widespread overcharging by Dollar General and Family Dollar. The Guardian published the article on Dec. 3, and for a while it was the most-read article on the newspaper’s U.S. site.

We had some tough competition: a drunk raccoon found sleeping off a bender in the bathroom of a Virginia liquor store. The two stories inspired my former Wake Forest student Hope Zhu to create the delightful cartoon above.

A couple of weeks later, we learned more sober news: 30 members of Congress, led by Democratic U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski of Illinois, had written to the two companies’ CEOs requesting internal documents about widespread disparities between shelf prices and register prices. I reported this in a follow-up article.

The letter cited our investigation, which found that the two chains combined have failed more than 6,400 government price-accuracy inspections since January 2022. “These staggering numbers lead us to wonder how seriously your companies prioritize affordability, consumer transparency and corporate ethics for the constituents we represent,” the lawmakers wrote.

The next day, we published another article: Dollar General had signed a $15 million agreement to settle five lawsuits alleging overcharging. We had mentioned the impending settlement in original article, but the details weren’t made public until Dec. 10.

And some podcasts to listen to:

• “The Pencil Factory,” an episode of “Snap Judgment,” tells the story of a Russian asylum seeker and his family who were deported from the United States and imprisoned in a former pencil factory in the Costa Rican jungle. When a YouTuber stumbled onto the scene with a camera, he became their best hope. Produced by John Fecile and Caya.

• My photographer friend John Noltner—and his non-profit, A Peace of My Mind—have launched a new series called "The Troubles." It follows his recent visit to Northern Ireland and features people who are leaning into creative solutions to heal old wounds and imagine a different future. The first interview is with Jonny Clark, who works at Ireland’s oldest peace center.

Happy New Year to you.

All best,
Barry Yeoman