Every Wednesday and Friday in August we will publish some of our favourite audio long reads of 2025, in case you missed them, with an introduction from the editorial team to explain why we’ve chosen it.

This week, from June: he’s spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast’s videos simply very savvy clickbait – or acts of avant garde genius?

Written and read by Mark O’Connell

This week from 2018: How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific. By Mark O’Connell

Malcolm Macarthur was the wealthy, bookish socialite who shocked Ireland with a brutal double killing in 1982, and caused a major political scandal. I tracked him down and heard, for the first time, the tale he told about himself

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors

This week, from 2020:

My life seemed to be getting busier, faster: I felt constantly short of time – so I stepped outside it for a day and a night and did nothing