She is venerated around the world. She has outlasted 12 US presidents. She stands for stability and order. But her kingdom is in turmoil, and her subjects are in denial that her reign will ever end. That’s why the palace has a plan.

A Venezuelan cop who had previously starred in an action movie stole a helicopter and fired on the Supreme Court. He became a rebel folk hero, moving amongst safe houses with a small band of followers, until he was killed in a shoot-out that he broadcast live on Instagram.

“I was never falling-down drunk. I was never belligerent. I always got my work done. I was never unkempt. I was always clean, I was always shaved, I always performed at work. I was always kind and gracious in the dining room. But I lived in hell.”

The son of a Red Sox legend, his trail of violent attacks runs back to his teen years. So does the line of judges who somehow saw fit, time and again, to give him one more chance. Now he’s on trial for murder.

Inside the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan:

The U.S. government has lied to itself, and to its citizens, about the nature and actions of successive Pakistani governments. Pakistani behavior over the past 20 years has rendered the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism effectively meaningless.

A biography of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios.

“The regular average layman couldn’t see what I see. And the way they’re painting the trainer is all wrong. Look at him there, screaming, Do this! and Do that! I never had anyone telling me what to do. I did it. Shouting at the fighter like that makes him look like an animal, like a horse to be trained.”

The bizarre tale of how the hiring of a reality TV contestant to greet high-end customers led to the firing of a successful CEO. Plus: a follow-up article.

The name Shecky can vacillate from noun to verb to adjective. The opinion of every comedian during that gilded age of show business, whether they were Republican Bob Hope or hipster Lenny Bruce, is that Shecky Greene was the wildest of them all. The craziest of them all. Most importantly - the funniest of them all.

“Look out at Twitter, at YouTube, at cable news. Behold a whole precarious world of media hopefuls swarming every bitter inch of the culture war, filming angry Americans, filming each other, filming themselves, grimly determined to find or frame a few seconds of a reality to sell.”

The man who brought together heat, yoga, monthly fees to use his methods, and raw sexuality, on allegations that he has slept with scores of his followers: “Only when they give me no choice! If they say to me, ‘Boss, you must fuck me or I will kill myself,’ then I do it! Think if I don’t! The karma!”

From medical health privacy laws to a maze of siloed information systems, the true impact of COVID-19 on American Indian and Alaska Natives is impossible to calculate.

Five hundred feet below ground with Ohio coal miners.

During New York’s ’80s and ’90s crack epedemic, a flashy detective who “imagined himself a crusader who created his own rules” and his star witness, a crack addicted prostitute who seemed to constantly be at the scene of homicides, sent dozens of men to prison for life. Now, they are under investigation.

The North Korean dictator kidnaps a famous actress and her film director husband, then invites them to dinner to chat about it.

"Of course, sexuality has never only been about reproduction, obviously, with human beings, anyway. But at the moment it's almost cut free to kind of float wherever it will float. And sexuality has been mixed with many things that I think the ancients would have been surprised to find it mixed with."

Three years after her gold-medal performance – and amidst rumors of a fall from grace – the author travels to Transylvania to track down gymnast Nadia Comaneci. He also enjoys several drinks with her coach, Bela Karolyi.

Part of our Olympics primer, on the Longform blog.

Ex-Ivy Leaguer and NFL-er Jeff Hatch spent years telling audiences of his triumph over opioid addiction, to great acclaim. Then as the rehab center he worked at drew national attention, a tortuous backstory of cops, dealers and deception came to light.

From Southie to Santa Monica, a gangster romance on the run.

The story of Tim Danielson, one of America’s top high school distance runners, who went on to murder his ex-wife.

On Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who pushed America to war. Chalabi died on Tuesday at the age of 71.

“Remember why we’re here: to empower the child. If you can’t handle it, keep your shades on.”

A startup’s plan to launch a fleet of cheap, small, ultra-efficient imaging satellites and revolutionize data collection.