Longform

Foreign policy as architecture; how embassies went from lavish social hubs to reinforced strongholds.

Not only is the penny useless, it costs the U.S. Treasury $50 million per year. So why is it still around?

The world’s most renowned chef, Ferran Adrià, says that the only way he can push forward the art form of cooking is to close his own restaurant.

Taibbi on the Tea Party. “After lengthy study of the phenomenon, I’ve concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They’re full of shit.”

The managing editor’s suicide has received extensive press coverage, in part because the story appeared to be a relatively simple one: his boss was a bully. It was more complicated than that.

In an elaborate FBI sting to expose corruption, four agents pose as futures traders in Chicago. The plan works–if you don’t count the hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars the agents lost in the process.

An interview with Michael Maren, who spent nearly twenty years working in Africa as an aid worker and then a journalist, on why NGOs and “feed an African child” charities do more harm than good.

Would you rather have one marshmallow now or two in a few minutes? How a kid’s answer to that question can predict his or her life trajectory.

According to this excerpt from Woodward’s Obama’s Wars, the president’s military advisors gave him only one option: send an additional 40,000 troops. Obama pushed back.

Can real activism happen on Twitter and Facebook? Malcolm Gladwell says no.

How the illegitimate son of Liberian ex-President (and accused cannibal) Charles Taylor went from being a small time Florida hoodlum to one of Africa’s most notorious killers.

For most people who participate in clinical trials, being a guinea pig is just a way to make a quick buck. For others, it’s a career.

This isn’t truck-on-truck violence. It’s the taxpaying owners of brick-and-mortar restaurants—along with a host of other powerful District players—who are waging the attack.

Or, the perils of promoting a middle schooler’s basketball skills. An excerpt from Play Their Hearts Out.

Behind the scenes with Kenny Powers, on set filming the 2nd run of Eastbound & Down, probably the only American TV series that would set an entire season in Mexico.

The relative prosperity of the Putin-era has thrown Russian bride-introduction tours for a loop, as a group of American bachelors learn in a series of Meet and Greets.

A profile of Sorkin, who wrote The Social Network. “I don’t feel like a nerd,” he says, “but I think I understand them.”

Michael Lewis goes undercover at Columbia.

Not long ago, Rand Paul, opthalmologist and son of Ron, would have been written off as a wacky extremist. Thanks to his Dad and the Tea Partiers, he’s poised to become the most radical member of the U.S Senate.

Notes from the Friars Club roast of Don King.

An 1992 interview with Martin Scorsese. On Goodfellas, “I figured to do it as if it was one long trailer, where you just propel the action and you get an exhilaration, a rush of the lifestyle.”

An oral history of Goodfellas.

On the golden anniversary of her first trip to study chimps, an ode to Jane Goodall.

In Torreón, north of Mexico City, cartel gunmen are freed from a prison, commit a massacre at a wedding that includes the band, and then return to custody.

In the last decade, newsrooms across the country have adopted a “do more with less” strategy. It’s a kamikaze mission.