The haunted aftermath of disaster in Japan.

On the artist’s portrayal of violence and humanity.

What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?

Terrorists boarded two planes in Boston and flew them into the World Trade Center. Massachusetts zeroed in on its top airport official, who has never quite recovered.

For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event “the Inversion.”

How a series of lies and an incompetent lawyer led to a Florida woman’s wrongful conviction.

Inside a small town revived by an influx of immigrants and then destroyed by a Homeland Security raid.

“I feel like we sort of choked.”

A group of volunteers is helping incarcerated people negotiate a system that is all but broken.

An investigation into the family of the accused Boston Marathon bombers.

The rise of the Peoples Temple through the lens of an earlier group: Father Divine’s Peace Mission.

Decades on, a massive half-built monument in the Black Hills remains controversial.

A torrid phone sex affair begins with a random call in a motel and ends a year later with a face-to-face meeting.

Emily and Kate wanted to have a baby together. They were more successful than they ever imagined.

American adolescents watch much more pornography than their parents know.

Discount chains are thriving — while fostering violence and neglect in poor communities.

They’re friends who once vied for the same jobs. Now, as editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post, they’re locked in a daily battle for Trump scoops.

“They think of us as pests, so they are trying to drive us out of our homes, for what is the Republican drive for our self-deportation if not a plan of fumigation?”

A weekend with the United Order of Tents, a semi-covert organization of black women.

On the art of the takedown.

“The final evaluation of a play has nothing to do with immediate audience or critical response. The playwright, along with any writer, composer, painter in this society, has got to have a terribly private view of his own value, of his own work. He's got to listen to his own voice primarily. He's got to watch out for fads, for what might be called the critical aesthetics.”

Today we're thrilled to announce our first Longform App Exclusive! One of the best articles of 2014 is now available completely free, only in the Longform App.

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On riding China’s Qinghai-Tibet Railway just before it opened:

Staring out at the shimmering tracks and concrete-reinforced embankment extending to the horizon, I can’t help but think of the senior Chinese scientist who confessed to me that the rail line he helped build might not be safe for long.

Reporting from Kuwait on the week of its liberation, a brutal account of the atrocities committed during seven months of Iraqi occupation.

A profile of the actor in the wake of the loss of his wife.