Tom Cruise did not, in fact, jump up and down on Oprah’s couch.

The fall of PCCare247, an Indian company in the business of selling fixes to problems that didn’t exist.

How a Japanese company took over the American living room.

Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.

The story of Soylent, a Silicon Valley concoction designed to replace your meals.

In appreciation of meaningful, ubiquitous, enduring applications.

Previously: Paul Ford on the Longform Podcast.

A reclusive hacker wages a shadow war against payday loan cyber-extortioners.

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

The dark side of startup life in Silicon Valley.

An extended version of this story is available as an ebook.</em></p>

An interview with Barry Diller about Aereo and the past, present and future of TV.

Previously: Vanessa Grigoriadis on the Longform Podcast.

Shai Agassi had nearly $1 billion in funding and a dream to replace gas guzzlers with electric cars. All he was missing was a plan.

A teenager orchestrates his own attempted murder via an Internet chatroom.

An investigation into the ill-fated text messaging platform ZunZuneo.

The Bitcoin ghostwriter who wasn’t.

In an old mine an hour north of Pittsburgh, 600 federal employees manage paperwork for the government’s retirement system. By hand. On paper. Without computers. The same exact way they always have.

An engineering team races to create a next-generation computer.

The first installment of The Soul of a New Machine.

On (not) getting by in the gig economy.

The story of “the biggest retail hack in U.S. history.”

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.

Trying to understand the appeal of Eve Online.

“I guess what you post on Facebook matters.” An 18-year-old faces 10 years in jail for a sarcastic threat on Facebook.

How a small team of 20-somethings helped spark a $50 billion turnaround.

After nine months of striking out, Chris McKinlay decided to change his online dating strategy. It worked.

On the Netflix hit drama and its show runner, Beau Willimon.

Finding personal stories buried deep in the YouTube comments.