Video Paradiso: The Strange Fate of Kim's Video
How the museum-quality 55,000 film collection that an East Village video store gave away ended up in a small, possibly mob-run village in Sicily.
Best Articles
Here Be Monsters
Three teenage boys decide to set sail after a night of drinking. They go missing for 51 days.
Downtown Is for People
On the then-new phenomenon of dead downtowns.
“It is not only for amenity but for economics that choice is so vital. Without a mixture on the streets, our downtowns would be superficially standardized, and functionally standardized as well. New construction is necessary, but it is not an unmixed blessing: its inexorable economy is fatal to hundreds of enterprises able to make out successfully in old buildings. Notice that when a new building goes up, the kind of ground-floor tenants it gets are usually the chain store and the chain restaurant. Lack of variety in age and overhead is an unavoidable defect in large new shopping centers and is one reason why even the most successful cannot incubate the unusual--a point overlooked by planners of downtown shopping-center projects.”
A Few Too Many
On the centuries-long search for the perfect hangover remedy.
The Itch
What the sensation of uncontrollable itch and the phantom limbs of amputees can tell us about how the brain works.
Chicago Christmas, 1984
How John, a father of 14, lost Christmas.
The Terror Queue
The moderators who keep Google and Youtube free of beheadings and child porn now have PTSD themselves.
The Art of Dying
“I always said that when my time came I’d want to go fast. But where’s the fun in that?”
The Ballad of Richard Jewell
How the media and law enforcement fingered the wrong man for the 1996 Olympic Park bombing.
The Man Who Never Was
Todd Marinovich was engineered from birth to be the greatest quarterback of all time. He ended up doing heroin in the locker room. A 2010 National Magazine Award winner, reprinted on Longform.
He’s a Liar, a Con Artist and a Snitch. His Testimony Could Soon Send a Man to His Death.
Paul Skalnik has a decades-long criminal record and may be one of the most prolific jailhouse informants in U.S. history. The state of Florida is planning to execute a man based largely on his word.
Up and Then Down
The lives of elevators.
Home for the Holidays
Surviving a trip to see the family for Thanksgiving.
“How I envy people who enjoy the company of their parents without the aid of pharmaceuticals.”
Reprinted from Home for the Holidays and Other Calamities.
The NBA's Most Unlikely Heist
How a Sacramento Kings executive stole more than $13 million from the team—and almost got away with it.
Roger Ebert: The Essential Man
A profile of the film critic.
Gimme Shelter
A year living in a shack in Oakland.
The Strange Life and Mysterious Death of a Virtuoso Coder
Jerold Haas was on the brink of blockchain riches. Then his body was found in the woods of southern Ohio.
The Things That Carried Him
Following fallen soldier Joe Montgomery from field to grave.
The Chameleon
The many lives of imposter Frédéric Bourdin.
The Incredible Story of the Collar Bomb Heist
In 2003, a man robbed a bank with a bomb around his neck. It exploded shortly thereafter, taking his life and leaving authorities to try to figure out who had put it there.
A Filmmaker Bared His Soul. It Ruined His Life.
Caveh Zahedi’s abject, self-defeating, ethically questionable, maddeningly original approach to documentary.
Midnight in the Garden of East Texas
A charming assistant funeral home director named Bernie Tiede murders a wealthy widow, keeps her in a freezer for months, finally gets caught, and still has the town's sympathy as his case goes to trial. The story that became Richard Linklater's Bernie.
The Adults in the Room
“The tragedy of digital media isn’t that it’s run by ruthless, profiteering guys in ill-fitting suits; it’s that the people posing as the experts know less about how to make money than their employees, to whom they won’t listen.”
‘We Have Fire Everywhere’
For eight hours last fall, Paradise, Calif., became a zone at the limits of the American imagination — and a preview of the American future.
Stickeen: The Story of a Dog
An adventure on an Alaskan glacier with a new best friend.
