On dirty laundry and the meaning of freedom.

“They cruise the city in chauffeured cars, blasting rap, selling pot to classmates. How some of New York’s richest kids joined forces with some of its poorest.”

Undercover in an industrial slaughterhouse.

Previously: Conover discusses this story on the Longform Podcast.

A profile of lawyer Jacques Vergès, who died yesterday after decades spent defending war criminals, terrorists and dictators.

The author of The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese, interviewed by his editor, Andy Ward, about storytelling, literary heroes, and why the book took him 10 years to write.

From a Tokyo smash-and-grab to driving a car through the window of a Dubai jewelry shop, how a ragtag band of Balkan thieves set a new bar for audacious heists.

A member of the Pink Panthers, Milan Poparic, escaped from prison yesterday.

On an artist who’s spent nearly 50 years bending the rules of space and light, and his life’s work, an extinct volcano in Arizona where he has been developing a network of tunnels and underground rooms since 1974.

“Ebert: Sometimes we do really dislike each other.

Siskel: And sometimes we don’t.”

On the gentle art of pipe smoking.

Conspiracy theories, utopian fantasies, and cult involvement surrounding the international standard of musical tuning.

A conversation with a 29-year-old approaching his apex.

Why parties, love, kids, conversation and more are so miserable (at least to Phillip Lopate).

Animal nature, human racism, and the future of zoos.

A law professor’s interpretation of the 2004 hit.

The looming collapse of agriculture on the Great Plains.

The triple life of G-Rock: upscale house painter, lifelong Crip, FBI informant.

How Craig Venter’s bugs might save the world.

The author of Truly Tasteless Jokes unmasks herself.

Is a serial killer on the loose in Wellfleet? An investigation.

A history of erasure as literature.

A survivor’s frightening account.

James Wood on Saul Bellow:

One realizes, with a shock, that Bellow has taught one how to see and how to hear, has opened the senses. Until this moment one had not really thought of the looseness of a lightbulb filament, one had not heard the saliva bubbling in the harmonica, one had not seen well enough the nose pitted with black pores, and the demolition ball’s slow, heavy selection of its victims. A dozen good writers–Updike, DeLillo, others–can render you the window of a fish shop, and do it very well; but it is Bellow’s genius to see the lobsters “crowded to the glass” and their “feelers bent” by that glass–to see the riot of life in the dead peace of things.

On February 10, 1982, Lucy Dixon’s daughter was raped. Against all odds, she and her family brought the man to justice.

A breakdown of the early 80s homeless epidemic.

Ten years after anthrax attacks, biodefense is busted.