On cattle auctions, reality TV and coming of age during the Great Recession.

Memories of life as a freshman cheerleader.

The writer is reluctantly whisked away to to a small house in upstate New York to attend an ayhuasca ceremony with six strangers.

On the president’s campaign to crack down on campus rape.

On being black in an all-white Swiss village.

The future (and past) of non-lethal weaponry deployed against civilian populations.

Going undercover with David Sullivan, cult infiltrator.

Exploring the riddle of Morgellons disease: sufferers feel things crawling under their skin and hardly anyone believes them.

Scenes from a Bowery flophouse.

At the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha.

A love story.

Fast-food workers, the minimum wage, and a future served by robot labor.

The gospel according to nine-year-olds; a missionary group that won the right to evangelize in schools and how children process their message.

What a secret audio tape revealed about the murder of mycologist and magic mushroom pioneer Steven Pollock.

Undercover in an industrial slaughterhouse.

Previously: Conover discusses this story on the Longform Podcast.

A visit to Tokyo’s first co-sleeping cafe, where one can pay a set fee to sleep next to a woman in 20 minute increments, though spooning, being patted on the head, and a change of pajamas are extra.

High school debate and the demise of public speech.

Tracking the circuitous fall of a Chinese political star.

Covering an election in Peru’s largest prison.

How one obscure sentence upset the New York Times.

Meeting the rebel government of an embattled country.

Digging for Return of the Jedi set remnants in the desert.

On wearing a concealed handgun and how it changed the author’s worldview.

An ill-fated trip down the river with a group of anarchists.

A Ugandan bill that would threaten homosexuals with imprisonment, or in some cases death, has its roots in the shadowy American evangelical group known as The Family.