A profile of the climber and thief Vjeran Tomic, dubbed Spider-Man by the French press, who describes robbery as an act of imagination.

When deep sea diver Dave Shaw reached the bottom of Bushman’s Hole, he discovered the body of Deon Dreyer. Though Dreyer had been gone for 10 years, Shaw was determined to bring him back.

Dozens of military contractors, most of them Black, have been jailed in the emirate — some on trumped-up drug charges. Why has the American government failed to help them?

just three months, we have seen Charlie and Tessy through a lifetime of crises — temporary sobriety, meth binges, two stints in jail, three moves, one eviction, several religious, end-of-the-world texts on our phones, a dozen different phones and phone numbers (meth addicts go through “Obama Phones” like packs of cigarettes), and a stay in a psychiatric hospital. Every day brings some kind of cruel surprise, some hardship that would pummel me, but is just business as usual for them.

Four men stood on the edge of the Shenzhen Health and Family Planning Commission, threatening to jump in protest. They referred to themselves as “China’s 21st century eunuchs,” damaged by medically-dubious surgeries.

When Larycia Hawkins, the first black woman to receive tenure at Wheaton College, made a symbolic gesture of support for Muslims, the evangelical college became divided over what intellectual freedom on its campus really meant.

Franklin Leonard’s anonymous survey has launched careers, recognized four of the past eight Best Picture winners, and pushed movie studios to think beyond sequels and action flicks.

After watching his father Sandy abuse his paralyzed former-jockey mother for years, Mat Crichton committed murder. Nearly the entire local farming community rallied in support of him.

In the not-so-distant future, all of our objects will talk to each other. They’ll make our coffee, find our keys, save our lives. The roadmap to a fully networked existence.

An interview with Barry Diller about Aereo and the past, present and future of TV.

Previously: Vanessa Grigoriadis on the Longform Podcast.

How divisions between Nigeria’s Muslim North and Christian South resulted in the birth of terror’s most ruthless movement.

A tenth of Kannapolis, North Carolina, residents were laid off after the local textile mill closed. A billionaire bought the mill and turned it into a mecca for biotechnology and life sciences research. Now many residents are human research subjects.

Jamie Smith said he was a co-founder of Blackwater and a former CIA officer. He appeared on cable news as a counterterrorism expert and he received millions in goverment contracts to train personnel. The money was real. The resume wasn’t.

On Forever 21 and the rise of “fast fashion”:

They have changed fashion from a garment making to an information business, optimizing their supply chains to implement design tweaks on the fly.

A West Hollywood aesthetician made headlines after allegedly trying to have a business rival killed. But the real story, involving ongoing harassment and a member of the so-called Bling Ring, may be more complicated.

When 25-year-old Valentine Strasser seized power in Sierra Leone in 1992, he became the world’s youngest head of state. Today he lives with his mother and spends his days drinking gin by the roadside.

David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, has written a new Obama biography expected to be a best-seller. His frugal streak has kept his staff intact. And yet, after a dozen years, he’s still the new guy at Condé Nast.

After one of the most decisive wins in Kentucky Derby history, Barbaro broke his leg at the Preakness, ending a promising career and beginning a herculean effort to save his life.

It all started with an unclaimed lottery ticket worth millions, soon revealing a string of unlikely winners that pointed to an inside job. But who had rigged the lottery? And how?

Can a violent adult jail teach kids to love school? A rare look inside one of the only high schools at an adult jail

Known abroad primarily for its stunning Pacific Coast setting and athletic lifestyle, the city [Vancouver] has since become one of the world’s largest sluices for questionable funds moving from Asia into Western economies.

In a small Minnesota town, an IT technician found his way to the darkest corner of the web. Then he made a deadly plan.

At Lucky Peach and the Los Angeles Times, Peter Meehan reshaped food media. Now his former employees are coming forward to describe the cost of his leadership.

A recent raid in Italy involving rare Chilean species highlights the growing scale of a black market in the thorny plants.