How Leo Sharp got busted.

Can neuroscience take the pain out of painful memories?

A profile of the Megaupload founder, who has started a political party in New Zealand as the U.S. continues to fight for his extradition.

On Cops, cop movies and Ferguson.

After Devaughn Darling died during a workout with the Florida State football team, his family was awarded a payout of $2 million. That was 13 years ago. Only $200,000 has come.

How the tech billionaire came to own 87,000 acres, three hotels, a wastewater treatment plant, a cemetery and 380 cats.

Under the cover of curing addicts, they beat and brainwashed their charges in basements across California. When a cult deprogrammer crossed them, he found a rattlesnake in his mailbox.

“I am having a moment, but I only want more. I need more. I cannot merely be good enough because I am chased by the pernicious whispers that I might only be ‘good enough for a black woman.’”

In 1943, a young research scientist found a cure for TB. It should have been the proudest moment of Albert Schatz’s life, but ever since he has watched, helpless, as his mentor got all the credit.

A reporter who investigated Scientology tracks down the man who once ran the church’s intelligence operations – and who may hold the secret to years of harassment (and the mysterious death of a pet dog).

On Pham Xuan An, Time’s Saigon correspondent during the Vietnam War, who led a double life as an intelligence agent for Ho Chi Minh.

Eleven years ago, three-year-old Audrey Santo fell into a pool. She nearly drowned. Much of her brain died. She cannot speak, can only barely move. And every Wednesday, pilgrims show up at her family’s house, ready for a miracle.

An inteview with the Saturday Night Live producer.

Previously: The Longform Guide to SNL.

On the FBI's failed negotiations with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco.

Previously: Malcolm Gladwell on the Longform Podcast.

After nearly 15 years in a Peruvian prison, an American woman convicted of aiding a Marxist terrorist group finds parole in Lima full of contradictions.

Reposted after it was pulled by The Atlantic:
How the little known $50/bottle champagne Antique Gold became the $300/bottle Armand de Brignac that Jay-Z “happened upon in a wine shop” and then featured in a video.

Sheikh Amer Hassan’s parties were notoriously debauched, evidence of a growing permissiveness in Karachi high society. His murder by a pair of young brothers surprised few.

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

The discovery of 30,000-year old, perfectly preserved cave paintings in southern France offer a glimpse into a world that 21st-century humans can never hope to understand. The article that inspired Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”

On Colombia’s “macabre alliance”:

In February 2003, the mayor of a small town on Colombia’s Caribbean coast stood up at a nationally televised meeting with then President Álvaro Uribe and announced his own murder.

A profile of the founding editor of Radar and current editor of The Fix, penned by a former employee.

A profile of new Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard, who in another life was a touring musician and hated Ticketmaster just like everyone else.

A trip to the Cannabis Cup serves as a backdrop for the story of how the War on Drugs revolutionized the way marijuana is cultivated in America.

How a musical subculture evolved alongside a technological subculture:

Rave's rise mirrors the Web's in many ways. Both mixed rhetorical utopianism with insider snobbery. Both were future-forward "free spaces" with special appeal to geeks and wonks.

How Tim Durham funded a libertine lifestyle—dozens of luxury cars, Playboy-themed parties, a plethora of failed businesses—on the backs of unwitting Ohioans, many of them Amish.