Longform

“It was a crumbling Parkdale rooming house, populated by drug users and squatters and available on the cheap. We were cash-strapped, desperate to move and hemmed in by a hot market.”

“An idea too good not to believe.”

“He is, as of this writing, the most mocked man in the world.”

A 16-year-old journalist goes on tour with a band on top. The article that inspired Almost Famous.

James Regan swindled his way through the city’s monied classes. The problem was, he seemed to believe his own lies.

On the life at sea of Henk De Velde, who has circumnavigated the globe six times.

Deciphering the rise of a lifestyle guru who sells self-absorption as the ultimate luxury product.

Millions of dollars worth of nuts are disappearing in California.

Attending the two-day-long “Crap$ 101” course, where aspiring craps players learn the Golden Touch system of betting, visualize dice tosses, and pursue the elusive “controlled throw.”

The post-election life of the woman who would have been president.

Colombia’s FARC guerrillas face a new battle: re-joining society.

Fred Steese served more than 20 years in prison for the murder of a Vegas circus performer even though evidence proved he didn’t do it. When the truth came to light, he was offered a confounding deal: he could go free, but only if he agreed to remain a convicted killer.

One morning in mid-December, a group of soldiers banged on the door of a house in eastern Aleppo. A male voice responded from inside: “Who are you?” A soldier answered: “We’re the Syrian Arab Army. It’s O.K., you can come out. They’re all gone.” The door opened. A middle-aged man appeared. He had a gaunt, distinguished face, but his clothes were threadbare and his teeth looked brown and rotted. At the soldiers’ encouragement, he stepped hesitantly forward into the street. He explained to them, a little apologetically, that he had not crossed his threshold in four and a half years.

An eccentric man becomes a strange fixture in a toy store.

A profile of Norman Lear, the producer behind All in the Family and The Jeffersons, who is still making TV at age 94.

A profile of the New York Times White House correspondent.

A Dickensian profession that can still pay upwards of $650,000 per year.

A night of terror in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

A hunt for maple poachers in Western Washington.

Baltimore-area renters complain about a property owner they say is neglectful and litigious. Few know their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.

Watching the jazz singer in New York.

A profile of Steve Bannon’s 29-year-old protégé, the Washington bureau chief at Breitbart, who according to a former editor “has two modes: murder and blowjob.”