Pond Scum
The real Henry David Thoreau.
Lost Girls
The writer’s relationship with two Moroccan prostitutes.
How They Do in Oxford
Race and Ole Miss football.
Stop the Madness
America’s devastating treatment of schizophrenia.
Raiders of the Lost Web
How a Pulitzer-finalist, 34-part-series of investigative journalism vanishes from the internet.
Over The Hills: The Afterlife of Heidi and Spencer Pratt
A portrait of Speidi today, complete with crystals, tequila and a vacillation “between having no regrets and having many.”
What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death?
The possibilities and limits of investigative reporting.
Collections Sponsored
The Longform Guide to Women's Soccer
The latest version of our all-time favorite video game is here! And the best part about the new EA SPORTS FIFA 16? For the first time, you can play with women's national teams from around the globe, including this summer's World Cup championship U.S. squad.
In honor of the new game—and the endless time we are going to waste playing it—here are some of our favorite stories about the stars of women's soccer.
Thanks so much to EA SPORTS for their continued support of Longform. Buy your copy of FIFA 16 today.
“Hello Father, The Boat is Sinking, So I Will Die.”
The disappearance of the Ghost Boat and its 243 passengers off the Libyan coast.
Coal. Guns. Freedom.
The dwindling fortunes of Gillette, Wyoming.
A Mystery Wrapped Inside an Enigma Shrouded in a Beard
A profile of James Harden, the Houston Rockets shooting guard that just signed a $200 million endorsement deal with Adidas.
Danny Meyer Is Eliminating All Tipping at His Restaurants
Explaining a radical shift in the way some of New York’s best restaurants do business.
John Seabrook is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory.
“Whether or not the piece succeeds or fails is not going to depend on whether I’m up to the minute on the latest social media spot to hang out or the latest slang words that are thrown around. It’s going to be the old eternal verities of structural integrity. So much of it is narrative and figuring out the tricks—and they are tricks, really—that make it go as a narrative. And that’s really the most interesting thing. Because you never ultimately have a formula that goes from piece to piece; it’s always going to have to be rediscovered every time you work on a long piece. And that’s kind of fun.”
Thanks to MailChimp and MasterClass for sponsoring this week's episode.
Superdonor
A one-time egg donor infiltrates a donation industry conference.
The Man Who Builds Luxury Bomb Shelters for Paranoid One Percenters
Robert Vicino helps the rich prepare for doomsday.
Shrimp Boy’s Day in Court
What happened when one of San Francisco’s most notorious underworld bosses tried to go clean.
Our Favorite Articles from Playboy
Classic interviews (Steve Jobs, Malcolm X, The Beatles) and stories dating back to the magazine’s earliest days — our complete archive of Playboy articles.
The Death and Life of the Great British Pub
Pubs are closing all over London. One Camden establishment, the Golden Lion, decided to fight it.
A Very Revealing Conversation with Rihanna
‘‘That’s something I don’t think I could ever do,’’ she said. ‘‘Send my only girl to another random country to live with people she’d just met. It had to be God that paralyzed Monica Fenty’s emotions so that she’d say, ‘Yes, go.’ To this day, I don’t know how that happened. But thank God it did.’’
Road Warrior
The hectic life of Gloria Steinem.
The Two Sacagaweas
The construction of a modern American myth.
The Strange Saga of Steve Jobs
The Hollywood backroom machinations that got the biopic to movie screens.
What Would You Do If You Found a Bag of Human Ashes?
The challenge of finding answers about some abandoned cremains.
Can Wolves Bring Back Wilderness?
The history of canis lupus in America, up to the present day.
The Storm Inside Reggie Jackson
He pauses and glances around him. Just about everyone in the place is aware of him now. When he continues, the voice is still under control, but the eyes have become lasers. “I know that some of the press is out to get me. It’s ’cause I’m more intelligent than they are, I handle myself well, I’m wealthy and I’m black—and there ain’t nothin’ they can do about it.” He flashes his joyless smile
