Longform

A profile of Cormac McCarthy–on the verge of fame.

A profile of the NFL quarterback gone bust.

On the road with Johnson Zeng, who buys up the metal “Americans won’t or can’t be bothered to recycle.”

Why a former Anonymous spokesperson was arrested for, among other things, copying and pasting a link.

A two-week island experience involving a 70-year-old interloper, his mannequin girlfriend, a couple of dogs and very little else.

“When it comes down to it, really, genes don’t make you who you are. Gene expression does. And gene expression varies depending on the life you live.”

Undercover in an industrial slaughterhouse.

Previously: Conover discusses this story on the Longform Podcast.

In January, the body of a 17-year-old athlete was found in his high school’s gym. The authorities ruled it an accident. His friends and family aren’t convinced.

Translation of an exclusive interview with Syrian President Bashar al_Assad:

“Have they not realised that since the Vietnam War, all the wars their predecessors have waged have failed? Have they not learned that they have gained nothing from these wars but the destruction of the countries they fought, which has had a destabilising effect on the Middle East and other parts of the world? Have they not comprehended that all of these wars have not made people in the region appreciate them or believe in their policies?”

They have lost five years of life expectancy and no one knows why.

The son of an American anthropologist returns to the Amazon to reunite with his mother, an indigenous tribeswoman.

What prompts a woman to exit society and marry God? Inside a modern convent in Texas.

How a group of serial entrepreneurs with an already impressive string of hits changed the way the world talks.

An account of the night last September when 15 Taliban, dressed as American soldiers, snuck onto one of the largest air bases in Afghanistan.

How real-time information can make you a better human.

A profile of Claire Danes.

The legacy of a phantom bluesman.

“Now Pynchon hides in plain sight, on the Upper West Side, with a family and a history of contradictions: a child of the postwar Establishment determined to reject it; a postmodernist master who’s called himself a ‘classicist’; a workaholic stoner; a polymath who revels in dirty puns; a literary outsider who’s married to a literary agent; a scourge of capitalism who sent his son to private school and lives in a $1.7 million prewar classic six.”

Adventures with a group of young Hasidic men looking for God in psychedelic drugs.

Life inside Za’atari, a camp for Syrian refugees just across the Jordanian border, where “the dispossession is absolute. Everyone has lost his country, his home, his equilibrium. Most have lost a family member or a friend. What is left is a kind of theatrical pride, the necessary performance of will.”

A history of humanitarian intervention.

Chris, a 25-year-old black man, tries to get a good job.

In search of the former boxing champ, who refuses to believe he has HIV.