When the Champ met Castro.

The Castro, 1990, and a first night in drag.

The quest to control hurricanes.

A happy ending, eventually.

The playwright’s forgotten son.

Organizing the tech sector.

On the suicide crisis in rural East Texas.

On lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

The fight to save an innocent refugee from almost certain death.

An interview with the author.

At The New York Times, a reckoning.

On modern motherhood and the birth narrative.

How Roger Ailes raised a ruckus in Putnam County, New York.

An excerpt from The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News–and Divided a Country.

“Rio is about far more than Phelps adding to his legacy. It’s the next step toward achieving the same peace and balance on land as he’s had in the water.”

Text from the books and Foster Wallace’s corresponding annotations:

Along with all the Wittgenstein, Husserl and Borges, he read John Bradshaw, Willard Beecher, Neil Fiore, Andrew Weil, M. Scott Peck and Alice Miller. Carefully.

When Putin suggested to Obama that the White House and the Kremlin speak through an intermediary, he named who he thought was the obvious candidate: his friend Steven Seagal.

Carl Malamud is on a quest to change the way average citizens can interface with the government – by scanning its paperwork and making it available free online. And he’s financing his effort with his own credit cards.

At 18, Katie Stubblefield lost her face. At 21, she became the youngest person in the U.S. to undergo the still experimental procedure to get a new one.

On the people who will be sent back to a place they’ve never called home if DACA runs out.

Years from now, we will look back in horror at the counterproductive ways we addressed the obesity epidemic and the barbaric ways we treated fat people—long after we knew there was a better path.

“I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down. Reading that changed my life. I used to wonder, Why am I doing these sets, getting on a stage? Don’t I know how to do this already? The answer is no. You must keep doing it. The broadband starts to narrow the moment you stop.”

Getting clean with a three-day trip.

Previously: The Longform Guide to Addiction.

An inteview with the Saturday Night Live producer.

Previously: The Longform Guide to SNL.

On the FBI's failed negotiations with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco.

Previously: Malcolm Gladwell on the Longform Podcast.

On Elena Ferrante:

Different names, every time, but the reaction is the same: a momentary light in the listener’s eyes that fades to bored disappointment. An Italian woman from Naples, whose name you wouldn’t know. Who did you expect?