Longform

Tom Justice was once a cyclist chasing Olympic gold. Then he began using his bike for a much different purpose: robbing banks.

“It’s not like there’s a textbook or some guidebook that teaches you how to behave or how to react when your husband becomes an exile.”

How a brilliant self-made software programmer from South Africa single-handedly built an online startup that became one of the largest individual contributors to America’s burgeoning painkiller epidemic. In his world, everything was for sale. Pure methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea. Yachts built to outrun coast guards. Police protection and judges’ favor. Crates of military-grade weapons. Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping. Torture. Murder. It's a world that lurks just outside of our everyday perception, in the dark corners of the internet we never visit, the quiet ports where ships slip in by night, the back room of the clinic down the street.

The making, and marketing, of a 9-year-old meme machine.

Why one physician took the risk of becoming an F.B.I. informant to expose alleged Medicare fraud.

His brother confessed to gunning down 17 people in Parkland. But he’s the only family Zach Cruz has left.

The inside story of an improbable team of divers, a near-impossible plan and the rescue of 12 boys from a Thai cave.

The life of Robert Earl Hughes, who at more than 1,000 lbs. was named largest man on earth by the Guinness Book of World Records.

From Driving Miss Daisy to Green Book.

Not knowing what these movies were “about” didn’t mean it wasn’t clear what they were about. They symbolize a style of American storytelling in which the wheels of interracial friendship are greased by employment, in which prolonged exposure to the black half of the duo enhances the humanity of his white, frequently racist counterpart. All the optimism of racial progress — from desegregation to integration to equality to something like true companionship — is stipulated by terms of service.

The Booker Prize-winning novelist on fantasy, reality, and a religious crisis that has never ended.

Life as an air-traffic controller at LaGuardia.

Activities include: getting his own stem cells injected into his body every six months, taking 100 supplements a day, following a strict diet, bathing in infrared light, hanging out in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and wearing yellow-lensed glasses every time he gets on an airplane.

Brothers comes to terms with guilt during an apocalypse.

Millions of American workers sign away legal rights without knowing what they’re in for: Arbitration Hell.

A gym entrepreneur’s side business in marijuana spins out of control.

How two Jewish American political consultants helped create the world’s largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

In 1802, horse rustler George Washington Loomis rode into Oneida County and built a mansion adjacent to an impenetrable swamp perfect for storing thieved goods. It was the beginning of the saga of the largest organized crime family in 19th century America.

In the poorest congressional district in the country, where thousands of people are arrested each year, one former cop with a complicated past made high-profile cases fall apart by insisting that the ends justified his means.

There was a woman of at least 90 years and a Hasidic guy in a tall hat, which was too bad for whoever sat behind him. There were models, full nuclear families, and even a solitary frat bro. St. Vincent brings people together.

I went through puberty at age 2.

An interview with James Baldwin on race in America.

On a Presidential paper trail.