Longform

What neuroscience is learning from code-breakers and thieves.

The search for the hottest chili.

The rock critic confronts his favorite musician.

A profile of Brian Eno as he transitioned into installation art.

Exploring the vast underground world of New York City with three of the people who know it best.

How Service Corporation International corporatized death, driving growth through everything from aggresive acquisitions, volume pricing on caskets and embalming fluid, a “strong flu season,” and pre-selling over $7.5 billion worth of burials.

New medicines can cost hundreds of thousands of dolllars a year. Are they worth it? A look at how a pair of pharmaceutical compainies set their prices.

In the shallow reefs of Ayungin Shoal sits a rusted-out ship manned by eight Filipino soldiers whole sole purpose is to keep China in check.

“I shared my plans with no one, not my girlfriend, not my parents, not my closest friends. Nobody knew the route I was taking out of town, where I was going, or my new name. If I got caught, it would be by my own mistakes.” A writer’s attempt to disappear for a month with a $5,000 bounty on his head.

After a beloved teacher is murdered by his schizophrenic son, his colleagues and students pay him the ultimate tribute.

Inside an industrial pig farm.

The underground economy of child sex trafficking, and what happens after someone is rescued from it.

The economics of climate change and the end of humanity.

Wes Anderson, the Wilson brothers and Bottle Rocket.

“I mean, writers are horribly envious and so nobody likes stars, we always feel like it’s a zero-sum game and whatever stardom somebody else has is being taken directly from us, so we hate the stars. But we also need them. Because the possibility of some level of stardom is what will continue to attract new writers to the game. If you’re a linguistically talented 22-year-old, there’s a list of things you can be: you can work in Hollywood, you can be a blogger, etc. And if being a novelist equates to some quaint thing like being a Morris dancer, who’s going to choose this?”

The capitalist evangelism of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In feminist manifesto.

On the life and death of Elliott Smith.

A family’s journey from Armenia to Syria and back again.

How citizen journalists are covering the war.

A jeweler from Queens tries to crack the code.

A visit to Star Axis, a desert art installation that connects you to the cosmos.

Jamie Leigh Jones’s story of gang-rape in Iraq changed the law to help victims, even though she might not have been one herself.

Tyson on his childhood in Brooklyn and the man who changed his life. An excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Undisputed Truth.