Medicine used to be obsessed with eradicating the tiny bugs that live within us. Now we’re beginning to understand all the ways they keep us healthy.

Getting clean with a three-day trip.

Previously: The Longform Guide to Addiction.

How Leo Sharp got busted.

Can neuroscience take the pain out of painful memories?

He was an early video streaming startup founder who threw parties where celebrities like Bryan Singer had sex with teenage boys. Then, he came to believe that music mogul David Geffen was trying to kill him.

On the online mug shot industry, which posts mug shots of anyone arrested (regardless of conviction) and charges $30 to $400 to have the photo removed.

An inteview with the Saturday Night Live producer.

Previously: The Longform Guide to SNL.

In Harpersville, Alabama, a traffic violation can lead to months in jail and a never-ending stint in a work-release program – what some refer to as a modern-day debtors’ prison.

After a final film, Kevin Smith is going to retire to a life of podcasting and speaking tours. Or so he says.

What happens in the classroom when a state begins to evaluate all teachers, at every grade level, based on how well they “grow” their students’ test scores? Colorado is about to find out.

You get steeped in this stuff as a kid, even if some part of you was always skeptical, it's hard to lose the residual sense that everything unfolding in the world—from natural disasters to commerce and geopolitics—signals some approaching doomsday.

An attempt to sort out whether Vick is truly a changed man or simply a very gifted football player who was bound to be forgiven.

The early days of electronic spreadsheets and how the tool transformed business.

Christopher Clayton Hutton hatched a plan to deliver Monopoly boards to British prisoners of war. The games were advertised as a diversion, but really they offered a way out.

Three years ago, Shell spent millions to send a colossal oil rig to drill in the remote seas of the Arctic. But the Arctic had other plans.

How Billy Walters, the world’s most successful gambler, keeps winning.

One day you’re teaching yourself to play the piano in hotel lobbies, the next you’re contributing a song to a David Lynch soundtrack.

The murder of a 34-year-old by a wig-wearing figure traces back to meth, an FBI sting and a former municipal judge who once sent a live copperhead snake to a foe through the U.S. mail.

A man felt wronged by his ex-girlfriend, a video game designer. So he published a 9,425-word online screed with “each component designed to be as damaging to [her] as possible.” It sparked the online fire known as “Gamergate.”

“Amazon has done a great job,” Jobs said. “We’re going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther.” Or they were planning to stand on Amazon’s neck and press down hard.

How HBO went from sitcoms starring Delta Burke and O.J. Simpson to The Wire. The view from a former HBO employee who witnessed the channel’s rise to prominence firsthand.

It’s legal to buy poppy seeds in America and it’s legal to plant them—unless you’re familiar with the simple process of turning them into opium, that is. Then having poppies in your garden is a felony.

Brian Windhorst was one of the first reporters to cover LeBron James. He was there in high school. There at the draft. There in Cleveland. And now he’s there in Miami, though the relationship is far from what it used to be.

DecorMyEyes is a online eyewear store with an unusual business plan; the owner harasses and intimidates customers who complain in order to get negative reviews posted across the web, in turn making his website more visible to Google searchers.