In 1985, a lost 22-year-old wrote a letter to a Manson girl-turned-model prisoner, asking for advice on conquering his demons. Then they fell in love.

Capt. Stephen Hill became famous when he came out as a gay soldier during a 2011 GOP presidential debate. Here’s how he got to that point, and what happened after.

How Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, with a little help from the Bush Administration, got 140 trees chopped down in a national park to improve his view and ruined the life of a park ranger in the process.

Jeffrey Holliman was deep in debt and out of options. So he took to the woods outside his small East Texas town. Then he started taking from his neighbors.

Since 2007, when they first heard that “the Florida of Russia” was being awarded the Winter Olympics, two Dutch journalists have been documenting everyday life in Sochi and how it has changed in the run-up to the Games.

Why did Anthony Gatto, the greatest juggler alive—and perhaps of all time—back away from his art to open a construction business?

Previously: Jason Fagone on the Longform Podcast.

A crusading minister has built a forested Utopia for the itinerant and destitute. But is a social experiment what they’re looking for, or just a place to live?

Barry Michels is Hollywood’s most successful therapist cum motivation coach with an approach that combines Jungian psychology, encouraging patients to embrace their dark side, and “three-by-five index cards inscribed with Delphic pronouncements like THE HIERARCHY WILL NEVER BE CLEAR.”

The closest thing that the international network of hackers Anonymous has to an organizer lives in a 378 sq. ft apartment in Dallas and, at the time of this interview, was on his fourth day of opiate withdrawal.

At times, Mr. Hsieh comes across as an alien who has studied human beings in order to live among them.

A profile of the Zappos CEO.

In 1967, Stanley Ann Dunham took her 6-year-old son, Barry, on an adventure to Indonesia. An excerpt from A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother.

The 20 soldiers in Second Platoon try in vain to hold down a strategic outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, “among the deadliest pieces of terrain in the world for U.S. forces.”

Over the course of a year, Luke Dittrich will be walking the entire 1,933 miles of the Mexico-US border “from the beach to Gulf” with a stroller. The first in a series.

Fred Wilpon, the owner of the hapless New York Mets, had more than $500 million tied up with Bernie Madoff when the Ponzi scheme was exposed. Now he may be forced to sell his beloved ballclub.

A rare interview with Gene Hackman, who says Welcome to Mooseport was his last movie, unless he “could do it in my own house.”

In 1992, a Chinese freighter tipped violently in a storm dumping a load of plastic floatee toys—7,200 red beavers, 7,200 green frogs, 7,200 blue turtles, and 7,200 yellow ducks—to the open sea. This is their story.

This new strain of Republican is not one Wisconsin, nor the United States, has ever seen...The new Republicans are corporate wrecking crews, given a sledgehammer, a piece of legislation and a command to "make it fit."

A polygamist clan descended from four original families, the Order are believed to run the largest organized crime operation in Utah. When a chest full of gold disappeared, suspicion immediately fell on a group of boys who had split with the cult.

On the world’s longest foot race, which takes place entirely within Queens, N.Y.:

Such were the hazards last summer in Jamaica, Queens, at the tenth running of the Self-Transcendence 3,100. The fifteen participants—all but two of them disciples of the Bengali Guru Sri Chinmoy, who has resided in the neighborhood for forty years—hailed from ten countries on three continents. They ran in all weather, seven days a week, from 6:00 a.m. to midnight, or until their bodies compelled them to rest. If they logged fewer than fifty miles on a given day, they risked disqualification. By their own reckoning, the runners climbed eight meters per lap, mounting and descending a spectral Everest every week and a half. They toiled in this fashion for six to eight weeks, however long it took them to complete 5,649 circuits—3,100 miles—around a single city block.

If the memory of the Twin Towers now belongs to the world, the story of how they have been replaced is entirely of New York: a tale of power, capital, shifting allegiances, and hallowed ground.

An abridged history of violence in "America's first suburb."

Note: Elon Green is a contributing editor to Longform.

Rogue cops in the LAPD Rampart division’s anti-gang CRASH unit (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) were involved in everything from drug smuggling and bank robberies to, allegedly, the murder of Christopher “Notorious BIG” Wallace.

Nearly four years later, I sometimes type his email address in the search box in my Gmail. Hundreds of results pop up, and I’ll pick a few at random to read. The ease of our everyday interactions is what kills me.

Remembering a relationship through IM.

A profile of a breakout male porn star:

The porn machine churns out performers to satisfy every fantasy, be it MILF, dwarf, fat, granny, or gang bang. But if you’re interested in watching a young, heterosexual, nonrepulsive man engage in sex, James Deen is basically it.