How John, a father of 14, lost Christmas.

Photographer Trevor Paglen makes art out of government secrets.

Hear Jonah Weiner discuss this article on the Longform Podcast.

"For 20 beautiful years, my homeland was open and (kind of) free. Now, I fear, it’s closing back up."

Previously: Keith Gessen on the Longform Podcast.

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.

Inside the dark, lucrative world of consumer debt collection.

The transcript of chats between Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht and a man he believes to be a Hell’s Angel who agrees to supply “hitters” to carry out 5 assassinations.

A group of teens allegedly create a violent game with a simple premise: “to knock out a stranger with a single punch.”

“I didn’t realize who my father was. So it didn’t make a whole lot of difference. I wasn’t there believing that I was receiving genius from on high. My father was my father.”

How one of New York’s major trash haulers does business.

Barack Obama and a tradition of letter-reading.

Ankle bracelets are promoted as a humane alternative to jail. But private companies charge defendants hundreds of dollars a month to wear the surveillance devices. If people can’t pay, they may end up behind bars.

Why do Syrian civilians in a Turkish camp live in relative luxury?

In 2008, Hana Williams left an Ethiopian orphanage to join a large, Christian fundamentalist family in America. Three years later she was dead.

Listening to music in prison.

Adventures in something called “Radical Honesty.”

Practicing photography in Switzerland.

How Washington left students to drown in debt.

On what’s in a name.

Life as a halal butcher in New York.

A fiction writer buys and loses a house in Oakland.

How to kick heroin in 24 hours.

To be mentally ill in Ghana.

A yearlong investigation by BuzzFeed News, based on leaked recordings, internal documents, and dozens of interviews with fans and insiders, reveals how Robbins has berated abuse victims and subjected his followers to unorthodox and potentially dangerous techniques. And former female fans and staffers have accused him of inappropriate sexual advances.

On (not) getting by in America.

A war on wolves in Utah.