Longform

“It looks as though someone has slapped three pounds of wet clay onto his face, where it clings, burying the boy inside. But Sam, the boy behind the mask, peers out from the right eye. It is clear, perfectly formed and a deep, penetrating brown.”

“There are critics who see their job as to be on the side of the artist, or in a state of imaginative sympathy or alliance with the artist. I think it's important for a critic to be populist in the sense that we’re on the side of the public. I think one of the reasons is, frankly, capitalism. Whether you’re talking about restaurants or you’re talking about movies, you’re talking about large-scale commercial enterprises that are trying to sell themselves and market themselves and publicize themselves. A critic is, in a way, offering consumer advice.”

Defensive end Shawn King was the 36th pick in the 1995 draft. His career with the Carolina Panthers didn’t turn out as planned.

Sober living, loss, and unexpected connections.

Asunta Fong Yang was adopted as a baby by a wealthy Spanish couple. Aged 12, she was found dead beside a country road. Not long after, her mother and father were arrested.

“Be careful. The toe you stepped on yesterday may be connected to the ass you have to kiss today.”

A profile of the late Buddy Cianci, who was twice forced to resign as mayor of Providence after being convicted of felonies.

There is a little-known network of 11 federal prisons in America called Criminal Alien Requirement facilities. They exclusively house men who lack U.S. citizenship and have been convicted of crimes. They are all run privately. And over the last 18 years, they have allowed scores of inmates to die from diseases that could have been treated.

“She is a tech bro — except she’s a woman, trying to sell underwear. Or, as she sees it, innovating in the ‘period space.’” A profile of Miki Agrawal, founder of Thinx.

A profile of the editor behind Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Jay Z’s Decoded, and more.

There were so many ways the two planes could have avoided the collision. The odds were so slim. But high above the Amazon in 2006, a combination of technology and human fallibility brought them together.

Winona Ryder has always been trapped in her own anticipatory nostalgia, and the public has always wanted to keep her there.

Last August, contaminated water escaped from an abandoned mine in Colorado and traveled down the Animas River to Shiprock, the second-largest city in the Navajo Nation. Two weeks later, the EPA declared the sludge-filled river safe.

The women would walk 10 miles from the village to the meat packing plants. Their pay supported drunk husbands and hungry children. When they were told to stop, they broke with tradition and went to the law.

How forensic anthropologist Sue Black does her job.

How an art shipper took advantage of the market’s opaque rules and shadowy deal-making to rip off a Russian oligarch.

The story behind an online gamer’s suicide.

The surprising bond between damaged birds and traumatized veterans.

For immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, applications for visas, asylum, green cards, and naturalization can take decades. Unless you’re willing to be an informant for the FBI.

Should having an intellectual disability disqualify a mother from raising her child?

John Scott is a hockey enforcer — he makes his living fighting, not scoring goals. Scott wasn’t supposed to make the NHL. He certainly wasn’t supposed to make the all-star game. But when the fans voted him in, the league tried to keep him on the bench.

How a distillery worker in Kentucky stole hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bourbon, one barrel at a time.

Kidnapped by rebels when he was 9, Dominic Ongwen grew up to command fighters who slaughtered, raped, and pillaged. Is he guilty of heinous crimes or was he a hostage the whole time?