Longform

On the perils and poisons of mining for gold in southeastern Peru.

“I didn’t realize who my father was. So it didn’t make a whole lot of difference. I wasn’t there believing that I was receiving genius from on high. My father was my father.”

For a half-century fires have burned under Centralia, PA.

In a speech that’s getting a bit of flak for recycling some of his past lines, the stage- and screenwriter says it’s okay to make mistakes along the way:

And make no mistake about it, you are dumb. You're a group of incredibly well-educated dumb people. I was there. We all were there. You're barely functional. There are some screw-ups headed your way. I wish I could tell you that there was a trick to avoiding the screw-ups, but the screw-ups, they're a-coming for ya. It's a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.

On the final two holdouts in Treece, Kansas, a former mining town that is soon to be wiped off the maps.

“Being Justin Bieber means having an endless number of T-shirts to destroy.” A profile of the pop star just after his 18th birthday.

The autopsy of a once-dominant site.

A Kenyan runner loses himself in Alaska.

How one company is rethinking the business of sex toys.

A profile of Jamie Dimon as he became CEO of JP Morgan Chase.

Remembering Patrice O’Neal.

How a convicted sexual predator emptied the bank accounts and ruined the lives of several women from behind bars.

The story of Southern Flight 242.

The world of high-end wine gets conned.

With flash, hip-hop echoes rock’s golden age.

When rock was at its peak in 1972, Americans earning the equivalent of $1m a year took just over 1 per cent of national income. In 2010, this group’s share of national income had grown to almost 10 per cent. At the same time, the average tax paid by these top earners almost halved. The rise of Jay-Z’s “new black elite” reflects the growth in numbers of the super-wealthy. But the opulence that he and West flaunt also reflects the growing estrangement of those at the top from the rest.

New research on children’s behavior.

The idea that a young child could have psychopathic tendencies remains controversial among psychologists. Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University, has argued that psychopathy, like other personality disorders, is almost impossible to diagnose accurately in children, or even in teenagers — both because their brains are still developing and because normal behavior at these ages can be misinterpreted as psychopathic.

A cop kills a fellow officer during a drug bust and claims it was an accident. Others suspect that it wasn’t.

The making of Thelma & Louise.

The story of Trina Garnett, “one of approximately 470 prisoners in Pennsylvania serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers.”

How one man made millions with a fancy hamburger.

A nasty divorce ends in murder and national notoriety.

An exposé of Internet Marketers.

A couple’s story.