Abdullahi Yusuf was 18 and ready to dedicate his life to ISIS when federal agents pulled him aside in the Minneapolis airport. He will never see the inside of a jail cell.

Franklin Leonard’s anonymous survey has launched careers, recognized four of the past eight Best Picture winners, and pushed movie studios to think beyond sequels and action flicks.

Did a handsome young Green Beret doctor kill his pregnant wife and two daughters? Or, as he claims, did a group of candle-carrying hippies carry out a vicious home invasion while chanting “Acid is groovy, kill the pigs”? A mystery that spanned three decades.

Grammy-winning liner notes describing the rise, fall, and rebirth of Roky Erickson, who founded the psychedelic rock pioneers The Thirteenth Floor Elevators before a charge stemming from a single marijuana joint landed him in a Texas mental hospital.

Dr. Elisabeth Targ became famous for running scientific experiments that appeared to prove the healing power of faith. Then she got sick and became a test subject herself.

An investigation into the Dr. Anthony Bosch and his “East Coast version of BALCO,” which allegedly supplied baseball stars Alex Rodriguez, Melky Cabrera and others with performance-enhancing drugs.

After watching his father Sandy abuse his paralyzed former-jockey mother for years, Mat Crichton committed murder. Nearly the entire local farming community rallied in support of him.

Aaron Greene and Morgan Gliedman were young and in love and pregnant and partial to heroin and living in a Village apartment with a lot of heavy weaponry lying about. Then they were arrested, and their stories started to change.

The story of Christopher Knight, who lived in the Maine woods for 27 years with virtually no human contact.

How companies and large temp agencies benefit from—and tacitly collaborate with—an underworld of labor brokers, known as “raiteros,” who charge workers fees, pushing their pay below minimum wage.

In the not-so-distant future, all of our objects will talk to each other. They’ll make our coffee, find our keys, save our lives. The roadmap to a fully networked existence.

Montaous Walton couldn’t throw, catch or hit. But he wanted to be a ballplayer. And with the help of the internet, the media, and an ambitious young agent, that’s what he briefly became.

The crimes of former NFL star Rae Carruth.

Previously: “The Boy They Couldn’t Kill” (Thomas Lake • Sports Illustrated)

“Since we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making as much noise as I can…”

Robert Aaron was a veteran horn player who sold bags of heroin to friends to support his own habit. Then his friend Philip Seymour Hoffman overdosed.

An interview with Barry Diller about Aereo and the past, present and future of TV.

Previously: Vanessa Grigoriadis on the Longform Podcast.

A cross-country drive with Michael O'Donoghue, the first head writer of Saturday Night Live.

Previously: The Longform Guide to SNL.

Inside the split of the Hoefler/Frere-Jones typography team.

How divisions between Nigeria’s Muslim North and Christian South resulted in the birth of terror’s most ruthless movement.

A tenth of Kannapolis, North Carolina, residents were laid off after the local textile mill closed. A billionaire bought the mill and turned it into a mecca for biotechnology and life sciences research. Now many residents are human research subjects.

A profile of the Rookie editor-in-chief, who makes her Broadway debut next week.

Inside the dark, lucrative world of consumer debt collection.

While war raged across Afghanistan, expats lived in a bubble of good times and easy money. But as the U.S. withdraws, life has taken a deadly turn.