Longform

It wasn’t easy, or cheap.

It’s quite possible to make six figures standing around on a movie set – if you have a union card.

It isn’t easy to find out the truth about the benefits of male circumcision.

“Okay,” I said. “What do you think is the percentage chance that I’m right?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Five percent?”

Living on your parents’ farm while pregnant changes your relationship to time.

Uncovering the real story behind Capote’s Hand-Carved Coffins.

Justice isn’t so easy to come by when an American soldier stationed abroad is accused of murder.

The love story behind the battle over gay marriage in Texas.

A friendship born of mutual interest in birding stretches across the Berlin Wall.

The great director always refused to get liposuction.

A profile of Sage Kimzey, the 20-year-old king of rodeo.

Finding the thread of depression in the personal history of a friend’s suicide.

In the age of citizen journalism, smartphones and streaming video, bearing witness to human rights violations is getting easier. Is it also making justice more complicated?

The selfie may have ended any hope of resurrecting New York’s nightlife.

A leading Guantanamo interrogator was once a Chicago police detective accused of police brutality.

An art museum in Tasmania is saving the local economy. It also offers an “eternity membership” which, for $75,000, will see your ashes displayed there once you’ve gone.

America’s biggest for-profit foster care agency has a history of abuse, neglect, and even deaths to account for.

Prospecting for gold is still a live trade in America, if you’re willing to walk deep into the desert with a hand-drawn map.

The man behind the craze for fermented alcoholic tea likes to tell the story of his own conception.

The young people fighting for democracy will be back.

A white gangster immerses himself in Asian culture to lead a Chinatown gang. He even learns to pour tea correctly.

A 58-year-old manuscript will become Harper Lee’s second novel, but questions about Lee’s care continue to swirl in Alabama.

You can have a PhD from Yale. You can be a rising star in the State Department. And you can still find yourself being investigated by the FBI for espionage.