Longform

A profile of the founding editor of Radar and current editor of The Fix, penned by a former employee.

A profile of Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian doctor who became Bin Laden’s #2 and has now taken over Al-Qaeda.

The first five years of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s tenure have been marked by a dangerous consolidation of power.

According to political allies and Western diplomats who have worked with Maliki, he isn't so much power-hungry as deeply cynical and mistrusting. The Dawa Party, which Maliki joined as a young man, was hunted by Saddam's Baathist regime. Even those living in exile -- like Maliki, who lived in Syria and Iran for more than 20 years -- organized themselves into isolated cells to protect against the regime's spies and limit the information that any one member might divulge if he were captured or compromised. Maliki's early career was saturated in perpetual suspicion.

A profile of driver A.J. Foyt on the eve of what was supposed to be his final Indy 500.

How digital shifts the way we produce, distribute, and consume content:

The future book — the digital book — is no longer an immutable brick. It's ethereal and networked, emerging publicly in fits and starts. An artifact ‘complete’ for only the briefest of moments.

On the relationship between Keith Olbermann and the camera.

In the early years of the Iraq war, the U.S. military developed a technology so secret that soldiers would refuse to acknowledge its existence, and reporters mentioning the gear were promptly escorted out of the country. That equipment—a radio-frequency jammer—was upgraded several times, and eventually robbed the Iraq insurgency of its most potent weapon, the remote-controlled bomb.

A profile of Ludwig Minelli, the head of the Swiss assisted suicide organization Dignitas.

A profile of Chris Evans, star of the upcoming Captain America:

At this point, which was a…number of drinks in, it was easy to forget that it really was an interview, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind that something might happen (and that we'd go to the Oscars and get married and have babies forever until we died?). But there was always the question of how much of it was truly Chris Evans, and whom I should pretend to be in response.

On secrets that surprise no one:

This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything.

On Bitcoin, the world’s first “decentralized digital currency.”

The search for the missing Holocaust hero began in 1945. The unending quest tore his family apart.

When a CIA operation in Pakistan went bad, leaving three men dead, the episode offered a rare glimpse inside a shadowy world of espionage. It also jeopardized America’s most critical outpost in the war against terrorism.

The name Shecky can vacillate from noun to verb to adjective. The opinion of every comedian during that gilded age of show business, whether they were Republican Bob Hope or hipster Lenny Bruce, is that Shecky Greene was the wildest of them all. The craziest of them all. Most importantly - the funniest of them all.

“Radically brilliant. Absurdly ahead of its time. Ridiculously poorly planned.” An oral history of the National Sports Daily.

John Ross, rebel reporter, became the sort of devoted gringo scribe who would give up drugs and drinking in order to better write about the native revolutionaries; the sort of man who used dolls to preach armed revolution to high schoolers in the weeks after September 11th.

A profile of Florida legend—and pardoned killer—Charlie Driver.

On LA Noire and the gaming paradoxes presented by pairing nuanced storytelling with a player’s free will.

On the rise of the modern city – and the rise of missing persons.

An essay on gynobibliophobia and the critical reception of women writers.

The story of Daily Kos and its founder, Markos Moulitsas.

On witnessing an incredible junior college basketball game 23 years ago in North Dakota.

The life and death of Anna Nicole Smith.

No one argues before the Supreme Court more than Tommy Goldstein.

The bitter rivalry within the aerospace industry to produce unmanned combat aircrafts.