Born with spina bifida, Noor al-Zahra Haider entered the media spotlight in 2005 after U.S. troops arranged her life-saving surgery in America. This is what happened when she returned to Iraq.

A profile of the writer.

Plus: An excerpt from McCann's new novel, TransAtlantic. (via Longform Fiction)

What happened to the Afghan timber worker after a 2005 battle was made into a book and feature film.

“Why do people laugh when tickled? Why can’t you tickle yourself? Why are certain parts of the body more ticklish than others? Why do some people enjoy tickling and others not? And what is tickling, after all?”

Inside the thriving subculture of Japanese men who eschew sex and romance with real live people in favor of real relationships with 2-D characters printed on body pillows.

Time is speeding up. And to what end? Maybe we were told that two thousand years ago.

On the shortcomings of both reality and fiction.

Louis C.K. has a deal unlike anyone else’s on TV: his network, FX, has no approval rights and offers no notes. He is also the show’s lone writer, editor, director, and star. A profile.

These were the people I lived with, these were my friends, these were my family, this was myself. I’d photograph people dancing while I was dancing Or people having sex while I was having sex. Or people drinking while I was drinking.

A profile of California congressman Darrell Issa:

A few days after we met in Las Vegas, Issa called me. He was concerned about all my questions regarding his early life and didn’t see why they were newsworthy. The conversation was awkward.

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

How a traveling medical technician managed to steal narcotics from hospitals, infecting at least 45 people with hepatitis C in the process.

She was the daughter of movie mogul Harry Warner. He was 15 years younger and embezzled her money, landing himself in jail. In prison, he offered a young inmate named Richard Matt $100,000 to kill her.

On a thin sliver of land called Rojava where “rules of the neighboring ISIS caliphate ha[ve] been inverted,” a Kurdish Syrian college trains its future autonomous leaders.

“You read enough books in which people like you are disposable, or are dirt, or are silent, absent, or worthless, and it makes an impact on you. Because art makes the world, because it matters, because it makes us. Or breaks us.”

Asunta Fong Yang was adopted as a baby by a wealthy Spanish couple. Aged 12, she was found dead beside a country road. Not long after, her mother and father were arrested.

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

“Okay,” I said. “What do you think is the percentage chance that I’m right?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Five percent?”

A thirteen-year-old adoptee born in Russia with fetal alcohol syndrome, his golden sheperd Chancer, and the trainer who taught Chancer to bond emotionally with disabled children.

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.

Twenty-one-year-old Briton Lucie Blackman came to Tokyo and found work in the Roppongi district hostess bars, where businessmen come to flirt with paid companions, and Western women draw a premium fee. Two months later, she disappeared. She would be found underneath a bathtub in a beachside cave.

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.