How Aja Newman’s trip to the emergency room uncovered the abusive behavior of “rock star” physician David Newman, who ultimately pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual abuse against his patients.

People said that women had no place in the Grand Canyon and would likely die trying to run the Colorado River. In 1938, two female scientists set out to prove them wrong.

When her former student was found wandering the streets a decade after she’d last seen him, Michelle Girard immediately agreed to take him in. Then she decided to do far more, including give him the Christmas he’d never had.

Banned in Russia and cut by Condé Nast from the GQ website, this story (presented in full) details the intrigue behind the Moscow apartment bombings, blamed on Chechens, that allowed Putin to rapidly ascend to power.

Data is the lifeblood of a functioning government. Over the past four years, the Trump administration has destroyed, disappeared, or distorted vast swaths of the information the state needs to protect the vulnerable, safeguard our health, and alert us to emerging crises.

An interview with rapper Drakeo the Ruler after he was released from prison, having previously faced the possibility of 25 to life despite being previously acquitted of murder charges related to a 2016 killing.

The Air Force, beholden to corporate forces, is trapped in a contract with Northrop Grumman to rebuild the nuke program.

As more homicide cases go unsolved, the backlog of unsolved murders grows and serial killers are free to kill again. Too few police departments are effectively deploying their resources to stop them.

In 2003, the destruction of one particular statue in Baghdad made worldwide headlines and came to be a symbol of western victory in Iraq. But there was so much more to it—or rather, so much less.

Two days in crisis.

Next is "culture training," in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call "international culture"—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one. The result is a comically botched translation—a multibillion dollar game of telephone. "The most marketable skill in India today," the Guardian wrote in 2003, "is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's."

James Wood on Saul Bellow:

One realizes, with a shock, that Bellow has taught one how to see and how to hear, has opened the senses. Until this moment one had not really thought of the looseness of a lightbulb filament, one had not heard the saliva bubbling in the harmonica, one had not seen well enough the nose pitted with black pores, and the demolition ball’s slow, heavy selection of its victims. A dozen good writers–Updike, DeLillo, others–can render you the window of a fish shop, and do it very well; but it is Bellow’s genius to see the lobsters “crowded to the glass” and their “feelers bent” by that glass–to see the riot of life in the dead peace of things.

How New York Times is clawing its way into the future:

The main goal is... to transform the Times’ digital subscriptions into the main engine of a billion-dollar business, one that could pay to put reporters on the ground in 174 countries even if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever. To hit that mark, the Times is embarking on an ambitious plan inspired by the strategies of Netflix, Spotify, and HBO: invest heavily in a core offering... while continuously adding new online services and features... so that a subscription becomes indispensable to the lives of its existing subscribers and more attractive to future ones.

A profile of the Hot 97 DJ a few months after “he told the truth about who he is, even if it’s not entirely clear—even to Mister Cee himself, even now, to this day—what exactly that truth is.”

Despite its association with piracy, BitTorrent is a company in its own right, and one desperate to hit upon a way to monetize its revolutionary file transfer technology.

Four men stood on the edge of the Shenzhen Health and Family Planning Commission, threatening to jump in protest. They referred to themselves as “China’s 21st century eunuchs,” damaged by medically-dubious surgeries.

Billy Mitchell’s quest for video game perfection.

How Derrick Hamilton went from wrongfully convicted to legal scholar to free.

Abdullahi Yusuf was 18 and ready to dedicate his life to ISIS when federal agents pulled him aside in the Minneapolis airport. He will never see the inside of a jail cell.

On the tortured psyche of former 49ers coach Bill Walsh and how it led to Finding the Winning Edge, his 550-page guide to the game that has become the football’s bible.

Aaron Greene and Morgan Gliedman were young and in love and pregnant and partial to heroin and living in a Village apartment with a lot of heavy weaponry lying about. Then they were arrested, and their stories started to change.

On an Indonesian town that serves both as stopping point for those seeking to reach Australia by boat and a hotspot for short term ‘contract marriage,’ which allows Saudi tourists a loophole to engage in Islamic-sanctioned prostitution.

Aside from the wealthiest players, nine out of 10 NFL athletes are likely to be insolvent within 10 years of retirement. A new executive MBA program aims to change that.

Robert Aaron was a veteran horn player who sold bags of heroin to friends to support his own habit. Then his friend Philip Seymour Hoffman overdosed.

A cross-country drive with Michael O'Donoghue, the first head writer of Saturday Night Live.

Previously: The Longform Guide to SNL.