“The sex abuse is a symptom of a culture that does not allow the athletes to have their voice.”

Inside a world where a user named Pizza can amass millions of followers, transform internet humor, get caught peddling diet pills in get-rich-quick schemes, and have her blog shut down—all before graduating high school.

When Ben Roethlisberger, Charles Barkley, Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal and the future President of the United States crossed paths at a celebrity golf tournament.

Investors all over the world fell for the schemes of the man who called himself Khalid bin al-Saud. But the truth turned out to be more incredible than the lie.

They’re known as the Jills. They’re two of America’s top realtors, selling the glitziest mansions in Miami. Then a place went missing—and everyday greed blossomed into full-blown extortion.

Thousands of bodies are buried in shallow graves around Raqqa, Syria. One group is using Facebook and Google Earth to identify human remains and rebury them where they belong.

Gabriel Zucman is an economist who specializes in documenting and estimating the wealth stashed in offshore accounts. His work has influenced the tax plans of more than one presidential campaign.

Did a member in a shadowy Mormon offshoot known as the Order collect a half-billion dollars in biodiesel credits his company didn’t deserve?

When he was 2, Strider was severely beaten by his mother’s boyfriend. Today, at 6, Strider lives with his grandparents in rural Maine, in and out of poverty, trying to make it.

Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film adaptation, starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the coast of Italy, has become a cult classic (and a warning).

For more than 50 years, world governments have trusted a single Swiss code-making machine company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers, and diplomats secret. It turns out that company was run by the CIA.

His savvy on a longboard earned him trophies. His burglary of the Natural History museum in New York earned him headlines. And his brutality on a Florida boat 50-odd years ago earned him a lifetime in prison. Now: What does penance get you?

How a sacred object from the Pueblo of Acoma turned up at a Paris auction house, and how the tribe fought for its return.

In just a few years, he’s become one of the most fearsome media figures in the country—mobilizing his vast Twitter following to promote his famous friends and punish foes. Can his own past survive similar scrutiny?

For a decade, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence had surfed the wave of populist-right politics like few other people in America. Then came Jan. 6.

Pirates could be found in nearly every Atlantic port city. But only particular locations became known as “pirate nests,” a pejorative term used by royalists and customs officials. Many of the most notorious pirates began their careers in these ports. Others established even deeper ties by settling in these cities and becoming respected members of the local elite. Instead of the snarling drunken fiends that parade through children’s books, these pirates spent their booty on pigs and chickens, hoping to live a more placid and financially secure life on land.

The aftermath of a revolution:

Amid all the chaos of Libya’s transition from war to peace, one remarkable theme stood out: the relative absence of revenge. Despite the atrocities carried out by Qaddafi’s forces in the final months and even days, I heard very few reports of retaliatory killings. Once, as I watched a wounded Qaddafi soldier being brought into a hospital on a gurney, a rebel walked past and smacked him on the head. Instantly, the rebel standing next to me apologized. My Libyan fixer told me in late August that he had found the man who tortured him in prison a few weeks earlier. The torturer was now himself in a rebel prison. “I gave him a coffee and a cigarette,” he said. “We have all seen what happened in Iraq.” That restraint was easy to admire.

Karen Holloman opened the door of her uncle's apartment with his best friend, Larry Young, a step behind. As they edged inside, she looked to her left and saw the end of her uncle's bed and his motionless feet. "He's been in here asleep all along," Holloman muttered, for a moment annoyed at the worry he had caused by not answering his phone. Her anger froze as she entered his room: The Rev. Marvin Moore lay dead in his bed, a bullet hole through the back of his head, a pool of blood gathered beneath his limp arm.

Clarence Thomas, then-chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, profiled by Juan Williams:

He agrees with Reagan's characterization of the civil-rights leaders as old men fomenting discontent to justify their own "rather good positions." "The issue is economics—not who likes you." Thomas has told me. "And when you have the economics, people do have a way of changing their attitudes toward you. I don't see how the civil-rights people today can claim Malcolm X as one of their own. Where does he say black people should go begging the Labor Department for jobs? He was hell on integrationists. Where does he say you should sacrifice your institutions to be next to white people?"

How Russia consistently undermines the U.N. in order to keep a multi-billion dollar monopoly on the sales of helicopters and airplanes.

In 1913, a ship carrying 31 explorers got stuck in the Arctic ice, hundreds of miles from civilization. The leader left to carry on the expedition. Others stuck with the boat. Help wouldn’t come for a year.

The money has dried up, the models are broken and “there are simply many, many more high-priced lawyers today than there is high-priced legal work.” On the end of an era.

Following the hunters and poachers, servers and saviors of the little-known pangolin—a scaly, endangered creature sold by the thousands on the black market.

How the Google co-founder, forced out of a leadership role in 2001, came back to run the company 10 years later.

In appreciation of meaningful, ubiquitous, enduring applications.

Previously: Paul Ford on the Longform Podcast.