The Secret Mainstream
The life and films of Werner Herzog.
Did Football Kill Austin Trenum?
Just days after suffering a concussion, a 17-year-old fullback hangs himself. Inside his family’s journey to learn if a brain injury is to blame.
Nietzsche Is Dead
The 1900 death of Fritz and the battle to define his legacy.
Heavy Breeding
The 1920s experiment to reverse-engineer wild cows.
Leopold’s Ghost
A college president on the bizarre experience of being informed by NBC News that he had hired a war criminal to teach French.
End Game
How Curt Schilling’s video-game company went bust.
The Olympic Games
An Englishman’s account of the first modern Olympic games.
Nickel and Dimed
On (not) getting by in America.
Russia's Top Cyber Sleuth Foils US Spies, Helps Kremlin Pals
A profile of Eugene Kaspersky, KGB-trained online security mogul.
A Wild Week in Lagos
A trip to a modern African megacity.
We Are Alive
A profile of Bruce Springsteen.
The New Yorker Records: Historical Note
A history of The New Yorker and its editors, from founder Harold Ross through Tina Brown.
The Longform Olympics Primer
Contributing editors Gretchen Gavett and Elon Green pick ten stories read before the Games, on the Longform blog.
Anthrax has hit Glasgow: the story of a desperate hunt for its source
Police and scientists investigate an outbreak.
Immigrant Number One
What became of Annie Moore, the first person to arrive on Ellis Island?
The Search For Nadia
Three years after her gold-medal performance – and amidst rumors of a fall from grace – the author travels to Transylvania to track down gymnast Nadia Comaneci. He also enjoys several drinks with her coach, Bela Karolyi.
Part of our Olympics primer, on the Longform blog.
Skin and Bone
An investigation into the global human tissue trade.
Tracking The Biggest Star In The World
David Johnson’s unrequited correspondence with Jay-Z.
"Is he coming? Is he? Oh God, I think he is."
The story of the Norway massacre, as told by the survivors.
A Plea to Be Free
Greg Ousley killed his parents and has been locked up for nineteen years.
Is that enough?
The Mysterious Disappearance of Peter Winston
A chess prodigy vanishes.
The Strange Neuroscience of Immortality
The scientific case for brain preservation and mind uploading.
China’s Black Market City
In mountainous Wenzhou “the emperor is far away” and the freest of markets reign.
In the Aftermath of Fauna vs. Car, a Suburban Butcher Makes Sense (and Some Venison) of a Random World
By day, Dan Brown runs the seafood counter at SuperFresh. By night, he does his life work: clearing, dressing, and sharing road-killed deer.
Wikipedia: Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan
On the evening of November 7th 1974, the 7th Earl of Lucan, an inveterate gambler and Backgammon champion with a taste for power boats, snuck into his estranged wife’s basement. He then bludgeoned their nanny with a lead pipe and placed her in a canvas sack, before attempting to murder his wife. Recognizing his voice, she convinced him that she could him escape, then slipped out a bathroom window. Lord Lucan was never seen again.
