A step-by-step proposal for fixing the broken economics of big-time college sports.

A memory of interviewing the late great songwriter Townes Van Zandt shortly before his death.

Steven Donziger, an American lawyer, headed up a successful lawsuit against Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorans. Then the legal tables turned on him.

On then-agent, now-congressman Michael Grimm and what happens when an F.B.I. informant turns out to be a con man.

A profile of Harold Ramis, director of Groundhog Day, who died today.

In Michele Bachmann’s home district evangelicals have pushed anti-gay policies to the school board. After a rash of suicides, teens are fighting back.

“In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice.”

A chronicle of the 2010 wildfire that burned down 169 homes in Colorado, told via the people who lived through it.

In an odd way, crime has fallen off the political landscape. To an extent it's been replaced on the agenda by concern about the dire consequences of mass incarceration. But violent crime itself remains a major area in which the United States lags behind other developed countries. To suggest that smarter management of the criminal justice system could make it less brutal while simultaneously creating large reductions in the quantity of crime sounds utopian. And yet the proposals for parole system reform found in this article are utterly convincing.

-M. Yglesias

A profile of the Bronx immigrant family on the other end of your Chinese takeout menu.

On a press junket in Ecuador, the author investigates the ethics of shopping.

A report from the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk—a.k.a. “The Last Nazi”—who died on March 17.

Death on America’s racetracks:

At 2:11 p.m., as two ambulances waited with motors running, 10 horses burst from the starting gate at Ruidoso Downs Race Track 6,900 feet up in New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains.

Nineteen seconds later, under a brilliant blue sky, a national champion jockey named Jacky Martin lay sprawled in the furrowed dirt just past the finish line, paralyzed, his neck broken in three places. On the ground next to him, his frightened horse, leg broken and chest heaving, was minutes away from being euthanized on the track. For finishing fourth on this early September day last year, Jacky Martin got about $60 and possibly a lifetime tethered to a respirator.

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

A profile of former Bosnia Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, whose war crimes trial began, and was abruptly suspended, this week.

A trip to Disneyland in the mid-1960s.

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

A look at Apple stores, where jobs are high stress, with low pay and little opportunity for advancement.

What would drive a man to stand outside the Vatican embassy nearly every day for 14 years?

On the road with three high school show choirs and a dream.

The playground, the Ivy League, the triangle offense,  and how we dreamed up a “black basketball” and “white basketball.”

The author interviews her mother about life as a secretary at Playboy in 1960s New York City.

INTERVIEWER: You once said the novel is dead. VIDAL: That was a joke.

A tech reporter tells the story of his ruined digital life.

The legalizing of euthanasia is usually seen as a advancement in human rights. But is it appropriate for cases of non-terminal illness?

When Jeb Bush married his wife, it was the bravest thing he’d ever done. Her role in his life is still a mystery.