A profile of the eccentric Gene Weingarten, the only person to twice win the Pulitzer for feature writing.

On L.A.’s Homeboy Industries, which offers former felons—including at least one disgraced CEO—the chance to work.

A trip to Disneyland in the mid-1960s.

Previously posted on Longform.org on January 25th, 2012.

In Ontario, Canada, ribfests were largely non-profit affairs. Then one man decided to make a profit off their popularity.

How an apartheid-era psychiatrist went from torturing gay soldiers in South Africa to sexually abusing patients in Canada.

What happened when one of San Francisco’s most notorious underworld bosses tried to go clean.

How one woman’s sexual assault by four University of Oregon football players in 1980 unwittingly led to the state’s expansive free speech protections.

How agents took down Mexico’s most vicious drug cartel and, in the process, gave El Chapo the opportunity to create an empire.

Why “the legal equivalent of outer space” continues to exist, fifteen years after 9/11.

Rabbi Barry Freundel said he would help dozens of women convert to Judaism. In the process, he secretly videotaped them naked.

A report from the border of ISIS territory in Iraq, where civilians are battling to survive.

How one man wants to transport the world’s heaviest cargo in airships that are lighter than air.

In his own final days, a Right to Die activist tells the story of his secret, illegal assisted-suicide service.

When massive ships sink, burn, fall apart or get stuck, their owners call Nick Sloane. His job: figure out how to save as much as he can.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, used to be a place with kids and schools and churches and houses. Then the ground caught on fire.

Seventy years after three of the bloodiest days in U.S. history, the battle continues to bring the missing men home.

America’s biggest for-profit foster care agency has a history of abuse, neglect, and even deaths to account for.

A correspondence school for writers turns out to be a sham. This piece forced it into bankruptcy.

Fast food used to be a transitional, temporary work. In Creston, Iowa, it has become a career.

There are two roles to play in the new world of on-demand everything: royalty or servant.

Nowadays, the young and privileged view un- and under-paid assistantships as the road to a successful creative career. Are they deluding themselves?

From Stefani Joanne Germanotta to Lady Gaga: the self-invented, manufactured, accidental, totally on-purpose creation of the world’s biggest pop star.

The city of Boston, the Tea Party movement, and the rightful heir to the American Revolution.

Karaoke renditions of ‘My Way’ have led to murders in the Phillipines.

It took a desperate screenwriter to find Max Mermelstein, Miami’s former coke overlord, after twenty-five years in hiding.