At a dinner party, the author meets one of Afghanistan’s last remaining maskhara — an entertainer, thief and murderer.

A conversation with the former first lady five years into her life as a widow.

Growing up among the tall waves and schoolyard bullies of Hawaii.

How Yvette Vickers, a B-movie starlet who had appeared in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, ended up mummified in her Los Angeles home last year.

BARR: What makes you laugh? BERNHARD: Well, it's really a myriad of things, but usually it's something that's very organic. It's something that happens on the street. BARR: Like fat people falling down? BERNHARD: No, no . . . [laughs] BARR: That really cracks me up. It's terrible.

A profile of the hardworking Samuel L. Jackson, whose movies have grossed more than any actor’s ever.

In need of a new lead singer, Journey settled on an unknown 40-year-old from the Philippines whose clips they found online. Arnel Pineda was perfect: just a small-town boy, living in a lonely world.

How the relationship between favela-based drug gangs and elite police units tasked with fighting them came to define Rio de Janeiro.

What happens after a defendant is found not guilty by reason of insanity? Often the answer is involuntary confinement in a state psychiatric hospital—with no end in sight.

The not-so-secret sex parties of Silicon Valley.

On the World Cup star’s relationship with her older brother, who has watched most of her games from a prison cell.

At 37, Brian Wallach was diagnosed with the fatal disease. So he tapped a lifetime of connections to give help and hope to fellow sufferers—while grappling with his own mortality.

All he wants is his own room and a kitchen where he can bake chocolate cake. He dreams of it while he sleeps in tents in parks and under the freeway.

When Jennifer Farber disappeared in 2019, suspicion immediately centered on her husband and press coverage almost exclusively painted her as a missing suburban mom. But reducing the 50-year-old’s life to a familiar tabloid trope missed so much of her story.

A year of isolation made me consider all the casual, unwanted touch women endure — and why it’s so hard to refuse it.

Breslin’s unflinching and devastating investigation of the porn industry in Los Angeles would be at home in many an excellent magazine. But Breslin didn’t go that route. Instead, she built a custom site that presents the story with her photographs and design.

-A. Madrigal

A look at Andy Warhol’s enduring popularity and power in the art market.

Warhol’s art was not supposed to be a matter of emotion, introspection or spiritual quest; it was to be an image, pure and simple. “During the 1960s,” he wrote knowingly in 1975, “I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don’t think they’ve ever remembered.”

Doc was a medical student in his 40s, but he spent his nights with the teenagers who hung around his San Antonion apartment complex, buying them drugs and booze. The first time he asked one of them to ritualistically kill him, they laughed it off. He would ask again.

When a boulder shifts and pins his hand, a climber on a solo trip is forced to do the unthinkable: amputate his own arm. A first-person account of the six-day ordeal, excerpted from Ralston’s Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

“After listening to him since I was a kid and seeing him live for—gulp—nearly 40 years, I think I’m beginning to figure it out.”

Kelli Stapleton, whose teenage daughter was autistic and prone to violent rages, had come to fear for her life. So she made a decision that perhaps only she could justify.

In California, Jeff Lee is a business school student at Stanford with an almost unhealthy work ethic and a penchant for selfies. In Malaysia, he’s teaching women how to win beauty pageants.

Recounting an appearance on Letterman.

For a daily short story recommendation from our editors, check out Longform Fiction or follow @longformfiction on Twitter.

Scott Storch, a producer who earned six figures for beats he made in less than an hour, was worth an estimated $70 million. Then he blew it all in a bizarre cocaine binge.

A social and financial divide is forming—between those who have student debt, and those who do not—that will have ramifications for decades to come.