An American journalist on being kidnapped, tortured and released in Syria.

A small New Jersey town is world-famous among Orthodox Jews as a place to come ask for handouts.

Sarah Marquis’s very long hike.

How the tech billionaire came to own 87,000 acres, three hotels, a wastewater treatment plant, a cemetery and 380 cats.

A profile of the novelist, who is surprised to be alive.

Almost 40 percent of the world’s population lives in countries with limits on abortion. Activists like Rebecca Gompert imagine a future where those limits are meaningless because most abortions happen at home.

Once their careers end, pro wrestlers often fall into emotional and physical disrepair. One of their own, Diamond Dallas Page, has a fix.

Inside the dark, lucrative world of consumer debt collection.

On frozen dumplings, industrial freezers, and what the future could hold after China’s burgeoning refrigeration boom.

Rand Paul as the movement’s Pearl Jam.

A profile of Garry Kasparov, who exiled himself from Russia last year and is running for president of FIDE, the governing body of chess. The election has become the dirtiest in FIDE history and a proxy debate over freedom and Russia’s future; Kasparov’s opponent has the full backing of Vladimir Putin.

A profile of a doctor fighting Ebola in Uganda.

A profile of “America’s most vulnerable comedian.”

The salacious correspondence between the President and his mistress.

Severely depressed snow leopards, obsessive-compulsive brown bears, phobic zebras and the inner lives of other captive creatures.

How Hafeez Contractor is creating an alternate India in the sky, where professionsals are “insulated from the chaos that has long hamstrung their homeland.”

How America is trying to fight terrorism in Africa without doing any of the actual fighting.

How Leo Sharp got busted.

The Srebrenica massacre, almost 20 years later.

A profile of the internet’s poet, Patricia Lockwood.

Rich students complete their college degrees; working-class students usually don’t. How one school is trying to intervene.

"Caught between the dealers and the cops in Hazleton, Pa., is a woman with a bad habit."

Previously: Susan Dominus on the Longform Podcast.

How P. Rajagopal, the founder of one of the world’s largest vegetarian restaurant chains, got away with murder.

“Successful brand identities in the House and on talk radio have never before relied on such similar skill sets — there has never been so much politics in media, and media in politics.”

Shamir is 15, bored and broke and balancing right on the edge.