Longform

The father: an Oscar-winning songwriter. The son, a college dropout and partier around downtown New York. Their alleged crimes; serial casting-couch rape (the senior) and a drowning murder in a Soho House bathtub (the junior).

“You’re either with Korn and Limp Bizkit, or you’re against them.” The birth of nu-metal.

A look at the legislative lobbying efforts of Michael Bloomberg’s $7 billion-per-year company. While the mayor has no specific day-to-day role at Bloomberg LP, he maintains “the type of involvement that he believes is consistent with his being the majority shareholder.”

How a Nigerian-American conned upwards of $40 million from banks during the housing boom using publicly available information from the internet, persuasive storytelling, and prepaid cellphones, and then ditched his FBI tail in a casino.

The story of three months spent training reporters in Saudi Arabia, where the press is far from free. “I suspected that behind the closed gates of Saudi society there was a social revolution in the making. With some guidance, I thought, these journalists could help inspire change.”

Brooklyn, Illinois has one of the most dense clusters of strip clubs and rubdown parlors in the entire country, drawing patrons from nearby St. Louis and its suburbs. Inside the clubs with the dancers, a strip club scholar, the mayor, and the regulars whose dollars keep the depressed local economy afloat.

When Conan O’Brien left NBC, he agreed to stay off TV for months and stay quiet about the network and its executives. The agreement contained no mention of social media, however. On the origins of a digital renaissance.

An opinion piece on the structural causes of unrest in Egypt; the business fraternity, globalization, and the fate of Egyptian women.

On the enduring racial segregation in Chicago and why it’s an issue no mayoral candidate is willing to touch.

Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity; when will our minds meld with the machine?

A profile of Vova Galchenko, teenage juggling virtuoso and early viral star.

On the Cairo knifing of 82-year-old Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz and its aftermath.

On Mark Twain’s recently released memoir.

A primer on income inequality in America.

A profile of Republican Eric Cantor: six-term congressman, new House majority leader, highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history.

Cathie Black, former magazine executive, currently Bloomberg’s hand-picked Chancellor of New York City schools

A look at what it takes to protect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he’s in New York City.

A profile of Arianna Huffington.

Born into Sea Org; a diary of a misspent youth (and adulthood) in the service of Scientology. “One of the first things I learned in the Sea Org, because I was a receptionist, was how to handle process servers.” (25,000 words)

How the Taliban reestablished itself as both a “quasi government” and a military force, and what that success means for the Pentagon’s plan to pass responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014.

What the twentieth century history of rocketry can tell us about innovation.

A newly minted, 34-year-old White House budget director gets a little too candid with a reporter profiling him during Ronald Reagan’s first year in office. Among Stockman’s many admissions: “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers.”

Reporting from inside the Church’s Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles.

During his 35 years as a member of the Church of Scientology, Oscar-winning writer and director Paul Haggis went “all the way to the top.” The story of why he left, and what happened once he did.

The juvenile ward on Rikers Island is a world of constant violence fueled by gangs and, allegedly, encouraged and overseen by the guards.