This month Narratively marks our five-year anniversary, and we thank you so much for your continued readership and support! We recently brought you our editors’ picks of the single best stories from each of our first five years, as well as some story selections that you may have missed. This week our editors revisited some of our biggest, most powerful longform journalism efforts that we’re as proud of today as we were when they went live. Enjoy!
1. The Truth About New York’s Legendary ‘Mole People’
By Anthony Taille
Two decades after NYC sought to relocate its infamous tunnel-dwelling denizens, a years-long investigation reveals a few hardy souls still toiling and thriving beneath the city streets. They insist they wouldn’t live anywhere else.
2. Reinventing the Oldest Profession
By Noah Rosenberg
Through business consultancies, political rallies and poetry readings, sex workers of all stripes have stepped out of the shadows.
3. Mr. Ince and the Hope of Being Needed
By Mario Kaiser
A year and a half with a tireless Turkish day laborer in Berlin shatters the stereotype of the freeloader in Europe’s pivotal immigration debate.
4. How Trump Seduced the White Working Class By Preying on Their Physical Pain
By Vinnie Rotondaro
Can an actual ache in their bones explain why so many Rust Belt voters flocked to the New York billionaire? A coalminer’s grandson digs deep to find out.
5. The U.S. Tested 67 Nuclear Bombs in Their Country. Now They’re Dying in Oklahoma.
By Zoë Carpenter
After a series of military experiments devastated their homeland, Marshall Islands residents were permitted to immigrate to the U.S. But they didn’t know their American dream came with a catch.
By Pearl Gabel
Torn between devotion to their faith and families and a desire to explore the outside world, rebellious young ultra-Orthodox Jewish men are resigned to live secret double lives.
7. A Deep South Cold Case Goes Frigid
By Ben Greenberg
A groundbreaking new law instructed the FBI to investigate more than 100 unsolved murders from the civil rights era. But one reporter’s story, seven years in the making, reveals the government has done shockingly little in the search for justice.
8. The Last Time New York Was Hardcore
By Michael Stahl
Throughout the ’90s, one high-octane underground music scene desperately held on to its rebellious roots of power chords, slam dancing and stage diving. Whatever happened to hardcore?
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