Longform

A visit to the massive Northern California surf break.

One year ago the journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and never walked out. This is what happened.

Retracing the writer’s life nearly 60 years after her death.

A tragic crime. A medical breakthrough. A last chance at life.

Many low-wage workers are confined to filthy bathrooms, can’t get breaks and even lose their jobs trying to pump.

Highlights from two hours of leaked audio from recent staff Q&A sessions with Facebook’s CEO.

Another inmate was unable to complete his application, and assented to voluntary departure, in which an immigrant agrees to leave the country at his or her own expense. “You’ll be on your way back to Mexico today,” said the judge.

After a mass shooting, who cares for the coroners?

An oral history of Lilith Fair.

Police departments have become more attentive to officers’ use of excessive force on the job, but that concern rarely extends to the home.

Doctors are disappearing from rural America.

Most tycoons give big to one or two universities as their children approach college age. David Shaw gave to seven.

The singer spends most of her time at home, working on a new album. That doesn’t mean she’s not paying attention.

Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia for ever, if the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo; if the Russians are in Berlin, it will not be long before they are in London: and so on. This habit of mind leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. The rise and fall of empires, the disappearance of cultures and religions, are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end.

We aspire to a life without discomfort, without unpleasantness. But what kind of life would that be? It is as hard to imagine a world without pain as a person without sadness: a whole dimension of existence would be missing.

A father struggles with old and new parenting techniques.

I was asked about labor protections for adult-film performers. I said: You have to recognize how complicated this is. The things that sex workers do to stay safe are almost always the things civilians want to pass laws to stop. Everything looks different depending on the distance from which you’re looking.

The economic reality behind a billion-dollar wellness craze.

One man’s quest to stop horse racing deaths.

Life in Silicon Valley during the dawn of the unicorns.

From the proto-bleep to meta-bleep: how the US government protects us from the profane.

In an instant it was gone.

In many countries, journalists are being targeted because of the role they play in ensuring a free and informed society.