“In the computer age, it is not hard to imagine how a computing machine might construct, store and spit out the information that ‘I am alive, I am a person, I have memories, the wind is cold, the grass is green,’ and so on. But how does a brain become aware of those propositions? “

Note From the Editors: As we were reporting this story, Newsweek Media Group fired Newsweek Editor Bob Roe, Executive Editor Ken Li and Senior Politics Reporter Celeste Katz for doing their jobs. Reporters Josh Keefe and Josh Saul were targeted for firing before an editor persuaded the company to reverse its decision. As we continued working on the story, we were asked to take part in a review process, which, we ultimately learned, involved egregious breaches of confidentiality and journalism ethics.

Saul is a Longform contributing editor.

The phrase “knew how to wear clothes” is a loaded one. To “know how to wear clothes” is another way of saying that Cary Grant embodied class, which is to say high class: Grant wore well-tailored clothes, and he knew how to hold himself in them. But he came from nothing, and the way he wore clothes was just as much of a performance as his refined trans-Atlantic accent, his acrobatic slapstick routines, and his masterful flirtation skills.

The sewer hunters, or “toshers,” of 19th century London.

Knowing where to find the most valuable pieces of detritus was vital, and most toshers worked in gangs of three or four, led by a veteran who was frequently somewhere between 60 and 80 years old. These men knew the secret locations of the cracks that lay submerged beneath the surface of the sewer-waters, and it was there that cash frequently lodged.

American demand for drugs gave birth to the cartel war that is paralyzing Mexico, but American guns purchased legally across the Southwest and smuggled over the border have made it staggeringly lethal.

Franklin Chang Díaz immigrated to the U.S. at 18, became an astronaut, tied the record for most spaceflights, and now might hold the key to deep space travel.

Pope Benedict XVI’s post-retirement presence in the Vatican has set the stage for a conflict that threatens to split the Catholic Church into two.

After Daniel Rigmaiden was arrested for a multi-million dollar fraud, he didn’t argue that he was innocent. He wasn’t. But he couldn’t understand how he had been caught. Rigmaiden had covered his tracks meticulously — the only way the cops could’ve found him, he realized, was through some secret tracking device that they had never disclosed to the public.

A profile of Robert Caro, who’s been working on a biography on Lyndon Johnson for nearly 40 years.

Taking a stand for public land turns out to be very good for sales.

“I mean, writers are horribly envious and so nobody likes stars, we always feel like it’s a zero-sum game and whatever stardom somebody else has is being taken directly from us, so we hate the stars. But we also need them. Because the possibility of some level of stardom is what will continue to attract new writers to the game. If you’re a linguistically talented 22-year-old, there’s a list of things you can be: you can work in Hollywood, you can be a blogger, etc. And if being a novelist equates to some quaint thing like being a Morris dancer, who’s going to choose this?”

She claimed to be a porn recruiter who just needed to see the women have sex with her photographer once before she could book them for jobs. But she and her photographer were the same person — a freelance tech journalist named Matt Hickey.

An important house in Florida history is for sale, its future uncertain. Some want the historic house preserved, while the racism that fueled the Rosewood riots remains.

A look at the brave new world of privatized postal services, “optimized to deliver the maximum amount of unwanted mail at the minimum cost to businesses.”

The secretive titan behind one of America’s largest poultry companies, who is also one of the President’s top donors, is ruthlessly leveraging the coronavirus crisis—and his vast fortune—to strip workers of protections.

Late in a career marked by both triumph and tragedy, the author has written a new book exploring the unsettling case of Emmett Till’s father — and the isolation of black men in America.

The rise of the “wildly lucrative” herbal incense business, and the downfall of one company.

The strange saga of Sarah Phillips, who went from message board commenter to ESPN gambling columnist and hid her identity from editors, scamming many of the people she met along the way.

How legends of the American music industry made millions off the work of Solomon Linda, a Zulu tribesman who wrote “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and died a pauper.

The curious tale of a man called Christian, the Catholic church, David Schwimmer’s wife, a secret hotel and an Airbnb scam running riot on the streets of London

Montaous Walton couldn’t throw, catch or hit. But he wanted to be a ballplayer. And with the help of the internet, the media, and an ambitious young agent, that’s what he briefly became.

If you wanted a divorce in the late 1800s, you had to move to South Dakota. Even if you were the niece of John Jacob Astor III.