The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Podcast

Episodes

Latest Episodes

The inspiring scientists who saved the world’s first seed bank

1/13/2025 • 35 min

During the siege of Leningrad, botanists in charge of an irreplaceable seed collection had to protect it from fire, rodents – and hunger. By Simon Parkin. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod Play episode

The ‘mad egghead’ who built a mouse utopia
From the archive: Cold comfort: how cold water swimming cured my broken he…
Teeth as time capsules: Soviet secrets and my dentist grandmother
The brain collector: the scientist unravelling the mysteries of grey matter
From the archive: The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?
The rollercoaster king: the man behind the UK’s fastest thrill-ride
Best of 2024: ‘If there’s nowhere else to go, this is where they come’: ho…
Best of 2024: As a teenager, John was jailed for assaulting someone and st…
Best of 2024: ‘It comes for your very soul’: how Alzheimer’s undid my dazz…
Best of 2024: Nairobi to New York and back: the loneliness of the internat…
Revisited: Two poems, four years in detention: the Chinese dissident who s…
10 years of the long read: Ukraine’s death-defying art rescuers (2024)
10 years of the long read: ‘All that we had is gone’: my lament for war-to…
A new nuclear arms race is beginning. It will be far more dangerous than t…
Revisited: Too much stuff: can we solve our addiction to consumerism?
The scandal of food waste – and how we can stop it
‘I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else’: the tragedy of Pales…
10 years of the long read: Seven stowaways and a hijacked oil tanker: the …
A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair
‘You tried to tell yourself I wasn’t real’: what happens when people with …
10 years of the long read: The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s f…
The cement company that paid millions to Isis: was Lafarge complicit in cr…
Journalist or Russian spy? The strange case of Pablo González
10 years of the long read: The invisible city: how a homeless man built a …
Has poppymania gone too far?
Slash and burn: is private equity out of control?
10 years of the long read: Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly di…
Hidden traces of humanity: what AI images reveal about our world
The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US
10 years of the long read: Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping fo…
‘Places to heal, not to harm’: why brutal prison design kills off hope
The trial of Björn Höcke, the ‘real boss’ of Germany’s far right
10 years of the long read: How the sandwich consumed Britain (2017)
‘For me, there was no other choice’: inside the global illegal organ trade
How oligarchs took on the UK fraud squad – and won
10 years of the long read: Man v rat: could the long war soon be over? (20…
Morality and rules, and how to avoid drowning: what my daughters learned a…
The shapeshifter: who is the real Giorgia Meloni?
10 years of the long read: Farewell to America (2015)
The cocaine kingpin’s wildest legacy: what can be done with Pablo Escobar’…
‘Like a cheese grater raking across my nipple’: why I kept trying to breas…
10 years of the long read: Is this the end of Britishness? (2014)
Special Edition: 10 years of the Guardian Long Read
Strange and wondrous creatures: plankton and the origins of life on Earth
No god in the machine: the pitfalls of AI worship
From the archive: The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged wit…
On board the Creed cruise: the unfathomable return of the ‘worst band of t…
A Chinese-born writer’s quest to understand the Vikings, Normans and life …
From the archive: The invention of whiteness: the long history of a danger…

The Audio Long Read RSS Feed

Share: Twitter • Facebook • Embed

Copy embed code: