A profile of Benicio Del Toro.

There’s a tale about a boy in Waycross. Near a canal, he struck a match, lit a piece of newspaper, and tossed it into the water. But when the burning paper touched the surface, it didn’t go out. The water burst into flames.

A cultural history of Bitcoin and what happened when the nascent virtual currency began to be covered by the mainstream media.

The Brooklyn Nets were built to be an unbeatable superteam of eccentric basketball superstars. Will they dominate the N.B.A. playoffs?

The rise and dissolution of the magazine that nearly took down a president.

A minute by minute account of the officers and first responders on the scene of the San Bernadino shooting and the subsequent firefight between police and and the Farooks.

The government says Matt DeHart is an online child predator. DeHart—and his parents—say he’s being framed over his knowledge of CIA secrets.

As the city is transformed by gentrification and inequality, comedies have begun depicting it as a place of magical connection.

Three years after a devastating wildfire, a California community faces another crisis: PTSD. Is what’s happening there a warning to the rest of us?

Wrestler Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka was one of the WWF’s first high-flyers in the 1980s. In 1983, his girlfriend, Nancy Argentino, died in a hotel room with a head injury. The case remains unsolved 30 years later—and after this article was published it was reopened.

The case against Snuka was dismissed earlier this month after a judge ruled him incompetent to stand trial. Snuka died on January 16th.

In Aug. 2008, the U.S. military called in an airstrike on its own security guards in Afghanistan. Dozens of children were killed.

“In some ways, joining the military is an act of faith in one’s country—an act of faith that the country will use your life well.”

“If you could put your own crew together and rob the biggest drug dealer you know, who would that drug dealer be?”

When Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison were roommates.

He and I had our differences. I am not inclined to be sentimental about those Arcadian or Utopian days. He didn't approve of my way of running the place. I had complained also that his dog relieved himself in my herb garden. I asked, "Can't you arrange to have him do his shitting elsewhere?"

Jen Tullock is ready for her moment. Is the moment ready for her?

How one of the world’s foremost Beatles collectors died homeless on the streets of Little Rock.

What it takes to defect from the military state of one of the world’s youngest countries.

On the U.S. government’s pursuit of a legendary hacker.

On the life and legacy of one of soccer’s legends, who died Wednesday.

In appreciation of meaningful, ubiquitous, enduring applications.

Previously: Paul Ford on the Longform Podcast.

Al Sharpton wanted to be a civil rights leader in the mold of Martin Luther King, Jr. It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

On the young and ascendant Frank Sinatra, “who ruled crowds by seductive magnetism and surrounded himself with courtiers, but had once been an adolescent alone in his room listening to Bing Crosby on his Atwater-Kent.”

A newly minted, 34-year-old White House budget director gets a little too candid with a reporter profiling him during Ronald Reagan’s first year in office. Among Stockman’s many admissions: “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers.”