Why did Anthony Gatto, the greatest juggler alive—and perhaps of all time—back away from his art to open a construction business?

Previously: Jason Fagone on the Longform Podcast.

An entrepreneurial primer from the founder of 37Signals. “So here’s a great way to practice making money: Buy and sell the same thing over and over on Craigslist or eBay. Seriously.”

On the border of Utah and Arizona, Mormon fundamentalists have long lived according to their own rules. When a former sect member and his family moved to the town where he’d grown up, they expected a homecoming. What they got was a war.

How did a pair of young rappers from Scotland, laughed off the stage for their accents, land a deal with Sony and start partying with Madonna? They pretended to be American.

Fifteen years ago, Sherry Turkle developed a little crush on a robot named Cog. Since then, the MIT professor has been studying our ever-increasing emotional reliance on technology. She’s not optimistic about where we’re headed.

The aftermath of a childhood filled with subway flashers, teachers who asked for hugs, and boys who joked about your breasts.

“The cowboy hats, target practice, and barbecue brisket were just a bonus. They were really there for the deregulated electrical grid.”

In 2009, 300 people perished in an earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy. Next week, six Italian scientists and one government official will stand trial for manslaughter.

On the skyrocketing number of Americans on disability—14 million at last count, with payouts topping those for food stamps and welfare combined—and what it means for the U.S. economy.

Reg Smythe was the greatest British newspaper strip cartoonist of the 20th Century – and second only to Peanuts’ Charles Schulz on a global scale. So why don’t we treat him that way?

A dispatch from the campaign trail and a new understanding of America.

A profile of the Carolina Panthers quarterback.

Firefighter Kevin Shea, one of the first responders on September 11, 2001, was “the survivor who couldn’t remember what no one else could forget.”

Baltimore’s state’s attorney gambled that prosecuting six officers for the death of Freddie Gray would help heal her city. She lost much more than just the case.

A profile of long-time White House butler Eugene Allen. This article served as inspiration for the recent movie “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.”

A comic who had previously refused to discuss his private life opens up for the first time, riding high on the surprise success of Blazing Saddles more than thirty years into his career.

Across the country, little-known schools are accepting almost everyone who applies, cashing a lot of checks, and offering so little support that only the most determined students leave with a degree.

An 1992 interview with Martin Scorsese. On Goodfellas, “I figured to do it as if it was one long trailer, where you just propel the action and you get an exhilaration, a rush of the lifestyle.”

The difference between a social network and a movie about a social network, and what it says about the Facebook generation.

People who are short on relatives can hire a husband, a mother, a grandson. The resulting relationships can be more real than you’d expect.

A biography of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios.

Five hundred feet below ground with Ohio coal miners.

The making of the “five-thousand-page, five-volume book, known formally as the Dictionary of American Regional English and colloquially just as DARE”:

What joking names do you have for an alarm clock? For a toothpick? For a container for kitchen scraps? Or an indoor toilet? Or women’s underwear? When a woman divides her hair into three strands and twists them together, you say she is_____her hair? What words do you have to describe people’s legs if they’re noticeably bent, or uneven, or not right? What do you call the mark on the skin where somebody has sucked it hard and brought blood to the surface?

Here’s what I really want to do at 32: fuck a girl and then, as she’s sleeping in bed, make breakfast for her. So she’s like, “What? You gave me five vaginal orgasms last night, and you’re making me a spinach omelet? You are the shit!” So she says, “I love this guy.” I say, “I love this girl loving me.” And then we have a problem.