Longform

Growing up with Charlie Brown.

Listening to the Big Star songwriter, who left the group before dying in a solo car crash at 27.

His voice, on the recordings, is too sensitive. That's meant not as an aesthetic judgment. It wasn't too sensitive for the material, in other words. It was too sensitive for life. You listen to him sing, closely, and if you don't know another thing about what happened to him, you know that the guy with that voice is not going to last.

On the road with three high school show choirs and a dream.

How six different people live off six different, and wildly varying, incomes.

How the author became tangled up with an international con man who may or may not have murdered several people.

Life as a police informant.

A profile of Chief Justice John Roberts.

How Obama’s immigration enforcement policies got away from him.

Transcript of the 1969 Montreal “bed-in.”

JOHN: How long have you been there, in the teepee? I mean, before you sussed the wind and everything, and you know, got your senses back? ROSEMARY: We had to put the teepee up three times before it was right. It’s like you can touch it, and it resounds like a drone, and then it’s perfect, the canvas. It’s a wind instrument that plays like a drone.

How, and why, the world got it wrong.

John MacNeil was convicted by the state of Massachusetts of second-degree murder. He was given a life sentence. He escaped. He was caught. Through an incredible feat of jailhouse lawyering, he somehow got himself paroled and exiled to Canada. Then he came home.

What would drive a man to stand outside the Vatican embassy nearly every day for 14 years?

The curious case of SpongeBob SquarePants illustrator Todd White, three ninjas, and an art caper.

Nora Ephron on adolescence.

With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world.

“Over the past century, coaches have used intuition and discipline to vastly improve athletic performance. Now scientists are taking the last step, helping athletes approach perfection.”

On a movement divided.

The story of an opportunity missed.

Crime, drugs, and politics in Guadalajara.

A look at Apple stores, where jobs are high stress, with low pay and little opportunity for advancement.

A self-conscious celebrity profile.

Remembering George Plimpton’s old-fashioned style.

Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the last—a figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. No, my father’s voice was not an act, something chosen or practiced in front of mirrors: he came from a different world, where people talked differently, and about different things; where certain things were discussed, and certain things were not—and his voice simply reflected this.

A profile of Doc Johnson, “the Procter & Gamble of sex toys.”