Longform

How the dream of the Euro became a nightmare.

How the relationship between favela-based drug gangs and elite police units tasked with fighting them came to define Rio de Janeiro.

How to kick heroin in 24 hours.

A jogging buddy collapses during a marathon, his heart suddenly finished beating. The writer goes looking for answers.

Guz Dominguez says he was trying to help baseball players from Cuba; the U.S. government says he was smuggling athletes. The truth is more complicated.

“As we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money?”

On the psychology of a rescue worker after years of responding to disaster.

On gay life in Saudi Arabia.

Mattathias Rath made a fortune selling cure-all vitamins in Europe before moving his business to South Africa, where he launched a massive campaign against retroviral AIDS medications and in favor of his own vitamin cocktails. When scientists, AIDS non-profits, and even Medecins San Frontieres objected, he sued.

On the political climate in Arizona.

On George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points.

On the utter brutality of life in the tent cities, one year after the earthquake.

On the last day of their junior year at Harvard, one roommate kills the other, then hangs herself. The press descends. A year later, a reporter searches for the real story.

The writer and his girlfriend move to the Dominican Republic, joining the rapidly expanding community of expats who claim to have found paradise. They promptly get robbed at gunpoint. To cope, he investigates the country.

But the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It's its own thing. And like other media it has a question that it answers better than any other. That question is: Why wasn't I consulted?

Last year, an Mossad hit squad traveled to Dubai to assassinate a Hamas leader. They completed their mission, but were later humiliated when a twenty-seven minute video of their movements was posted online. How their cover got blown.

A caller poses as a policeman and convinces McDonald’s managers to strip-search a female employee. It’s not the first time.

The backstory on Julian Assange’s relationship with the Guardian and the New York Times.

How Internet porn has altered the ways we think about, and engage in, sex.

The new purgatory; what becomes of digital identities after death.

On how 21st century culture shifts killed the nerd and what lies ahead.

On the (disputed) origins of the Huffington Post.

From the 1940s through the early 70s, incoming freshman at Harvard, Yale, Vassar, Wellesley, and several other top schools were photographed nude in the name of science–bogus science, as it turned out. Most of the photos were destroyed, but not all.

A profile of Mitch Landrieu, the first white mayor of New Orleans in nearly 30 years–part of a larger post-Katrina trend in the city’s politics. “The elected leadership looks almost like a photo negative of the pre-Katrina government.”

A 15-year-old dies shortly after collapsing from heatstroke during a high school football practice. Was it has coach’s fault? The state thought so, and put him on trial.