IF YOU WANT a juicy longread to sink your teeth into, you’ve come to the right place.

Here are three to save for a moment of peace, or devour straight away.

1. Olympic athlete, paralysed

Laís Souza was one of Brazil’s best gymnast when she qualified for the 2014 Winter Games at the Olympics. She was to compete in aerial skiing, but one day on a ski run, something terrible happened.

(New York Times, 46 mins)

But the story she sees in her mind always ends the same way: She is lying helpless in the snow. Her coach is kneeling above her, tears spilling down his face. And the stillness of the mountain has been shattered by the angry, whirring blades of the helicopter that has come to take her to the hospital.

2. The quiet zone

Would you be able to survive without your mobile phone? Here’s a visit to the National Radio Quiet Zone in the USA, which has 13,000 square miles of radio silence.

(BBC, 10 mins)

There are a few exceptions to the rule though – emergency services are allowed to use one particular frequency for example. And staff at the GBT have a microwave where they can heat up their lunch – but it’s housed in a special cage to stop radio waves leaking out.

3. The last day of her life

Sandy Bem was told she had Alzheimer’s disease. A fierce intellectual, she wanted to choose when she she would die.

(New York Times, 41 mins)

Over the next several weeks, Sandy told those closest to her about her diagnosis and her plan to end her life before she became incapable of doing so. She told her two adult children, Emily and Jeremy, both in their 30s, and a handful of others: Karen; Daryl’s sister, Robyn Bem; and Sandy’s sister, Bev Lipsitz, who lived in Oregon. No one in that inner circle tried to talk her out of suicide; they knew how fierce she could be once her mind was made up.

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