A former employee’s horror stories.

A profile of the most powerful woman in the world.

Nancy and Frank Howard were happily married for three decades. Then he fell in love with another woman, embezzled $30 million, and hired a succession of incompetent hit men to kill her.

The rapper who never grew up.

An argument for how the system protects police.

A profile of Shigeru Miyamoto, the man who invented Donkey Kong, Mario, and the Wii.

How a group of roommates in Minneapolis created the most enduring educational game ever.

Chronicling the viral spread of the early video game Spacewar through computer science departments around the country, with students hacking in their own variations on the game and passing it on, until it eventually arrived in coffee shops at 25 cents per play.

Duke Nukem 3D made its creators filthy rich. Trying to complete its sequel nearly destroyed them.

A profile of Dave Jones, the designer of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto.

A “crude table-tennis arcade game” called Pong and the birth of the video game industry.

The story and work of Seedfeeder.

Sixteen years after he was exposed as the most fraudulent journalist of his generation, Stephen Glass is confronted by an old friend.

How do you start closing the gap between rich and poor? Convince the rich to do it themselves.

L’Wren Scott went from bullied Mormon teen to international model to Hollywood stylist to fashion designer, becoming Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the process. In March, she took her own life.

An investigation into sexual abuse in youth sports, with a focus on USA Swimming.

The Columbia shuttle was to be a revolution for NASA. But a year before its first launch, the shuttle was several years behind schedule, had cost $1 billion, and wasn’t guaranteed to ever get off the ground.

Sex in space.

A profile of celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The inside story of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and subsequent investigation.

An interview with Ralph Lapp, a member of the Apollo Project.

Elon Musk's dreams of colonizing Mars.

Life as a serial killer’s daughter.

A profile of Chris Rock as he makes one last attempt to jump from standup to leading man.

A son’s love letter to his sick mom.

The author on why he belives in God (“It makes things better”), the perils of writing high (“Annie Wilkes is cocaine, she was my number-one fan”) and what he thinks of other writers (“Hemingway sucks, basically”).

Experiments in workday productivity.

The the incredible story of Rick Wershe, an infamous teenage drug dealer in 1980s Detroit who flew in kilos of cocaine and was arrested at 17. Still incarcerated, Wershe now claims he was working with the FBI all along. Was one of Detroit’s most notorious criminals also one of the feds’ most valuable informants?

Available free, only in the Longform App.

What do you do when you think a family member is a murderer? Step one: stop letting her make you dinner.

The story of Frank Bourassa, the world’s most prolific counterfeiter.

He has a staff of 300. His website gets more traffic than Gawker and has 300,000 paying subscribers. He has a clothing line, a string of bestselling books, a movie studio and a radio show syndicated on 400 stations. A profile of Glenn Beck, mogul.

Scrutinizing the gluten-free craze.

"This is how I think of that landscape when I stop to remember—although I know, before you raise a sceptical brow, the over-optimism of memory.

Memories of a distant relationship, excerpted from Dear Thief.

On the fallibility of memory.

On childhood amnesia, or why we don’t remember much before age seven.

How our memories become contaminated by inaccuracies.

Life after losing your memory at 22.

Inside the minds of two people, one with the world’s best memory and one with the world’s worst.

How memories go wrong.

A story of diamonds, thieves, and the Balkans.

The most prolific bank robber in Texas history.

Gerald Blanchard, the world’s most ingenious thief, made his first swipe at age six. And he didn’t stop, robbing banks and stealing jewels around the world until a pair of obsessed Winnipeg cops took his case.

The motley gang of L.A. teens that cat-burgled celebrities, sometimes repeatedly, in search of designer clothes, jewelry, and something to do. The story that became The Bling Ring.

After two New Jersey homes were robbed of their silver—only their silver—in the same night, the local police got a call from a detective in Greenwich, Connecticut. “I know the guy who’s doing your burglaries.”

The grim world of outsourced content moderation.

A profile of Nicki Minaj.

Life in America without dental care.

“The term douchebag, again used as we already use it, has the power to name white ruling class power and white sexist privilege as noxious, selfish, toxic, foolish, and above all, dangerous.”

The author of The Hot Zone on how geneticists can help contain the current outbreak.

How smallpox went from eradicated disease to the ideal weapon of bioterrorists.

The author of The Hot Zone on how geneticists can help contain the current outbreak.

The story of H1N1 and John Behnken, whose life it claimed.

New York during the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Living on borrowed time, with liver cancer.

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

A dispatch from Lima, Ohio.

Inside the stronghold of Commander Pigeon, “collector of lost and exiled men.”

The bungled theft of a $6 million violin.

Jamie Smith said he was a co-founder of Blackwater and a former CIA officer. He appeared on cable news as a counterterrorism expert and he received millions in goverment contracts to train personnel. The money was real. The resume wasn’t.

How a small group of gamers has been able to “set the terms of debate in a $100 billion industry, even as they send women like Brianna Wu into hiding and show every sign that they intend to keep doing so until all their demands are met.”

America’s underground Chinese restaurant workers.

The story of TWA Flight 841.

On loving and hating and living in Manhattan.

“I am having a moment, but I only want more. I need more. I cannot merely be good enough because I am chased by the pernicious whispers that I might only be ‘good enough for a black woman.’”

Jamie Smith said he was a co-founder of Blackwater and a former CIA officer. He appeared on cable news as a counterterrorism expert and he received millions in goverment contracts to train personnel. The money was real. The resume wasn’t.

How the CIA used a fake science fiction film to sneak six Americans out of revolutionary Iran. The declassified story that became Ben Affleck’s Argo.

Throughout the ’50s and ’60s, media outlets including the New York Times and CBS News provided the CIA with information and cover for agents. Then everyone decided to pretend it had never happened.

Erik Prince, the boyish CEO of America’s largest and most controversial mercenary force, Blackwater, also happened to be a CIA agent.

The story of William Morgan: American, wanderer, Cuban revolutionary, possible spy.

When a CIA operation in Pakistan went bad, leaving three men dead, the episode offered a rare glimpse inside a shadowy world of espionage. It also jeopardized America’s most critical outpost in the war against terrorism.

On the CIA’s early operations.

A spy takes on his own agency.

A three-part series on the U.S. intelligence system post-9/11.

The murder of a West Virginia teenager by her two best friends.

Under the cover of curing addicts, they beat and brainwashed their charges in basements across California. When a cult deprogrammer crossed them, he found a rattlesnake in his mailbox.

Nearly 70 years after Bugsy Siegel’s unsolved murder in Beverly Hills, a family finally comes forward: they know who did it.

The author, age 96, on the end.

Sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder was accused of taking a backpack. He spent the next three years on Rikers Island, without trial.

The end of the rock star era.

“When I woke up hours later, I really believed I had been in those mountains hiking — that it was not a dream. And I really had lost my voice. I had lost my words. I was unable to say, ‘I am trapped in my brain’ or, ‘My memories are mixing with imagination.’”

When Carmen Segarra was hired to examine Goldman Sachs for the New York Fed, she bought a small recorder and began taping her meetings. Here is what she found before she was fired.

Sam Simon made a fortune from The Simpsons. Now, diagnosed with terminal cancer, he is racing to spend it.

The war over Airbnb gets personal.

Maintaining order behind bars.

How, and why, a 34-year-old woman named Charity Johnson tricked people all over the country into believing she was still in high school.

On the Cold War and the Space Race.

“Big things have enormous beginnings.”

The story of one of the 74,000 children who come to this country each year alone and undocumented.

Sex, lies and fraud alleged at West Virginia University.

Marital advice columns from the past.

An oral history of the Tinderverse.

In the U.S. military, more than half of rape victims are men.

A profile of the highest-paid female executive in America, who was born male

A 15-year-old Russian has a shorter life expectancy than a peer in Bangladesh, Cambodia, or Yemen.

The case of Brett Kimberlin.

On childhood amnesia, or why we don’t remember much before age seven.

One rabbi’s tactics against husbands who refuse to divorce their wives.

Tony Ma will bet you as much as $600,000 to train your student for college acceptance. If the student gets into their top choice school, Ma takes the cash. Rejected? He gets nothing.

The anatomy of a collapse.

How seven Italian scientists came to be convicted of manslaughter following a catastrophic quake.

The rise and fall of travel writing.

On the first season of Saturday Night Live, an excerpt from Saturday Night (1986).

After Devaughn Darling died during a workout with the Florida State football team, his family was awarded a payout of $2 million. That was 13 years ago. Only $200,000 has come.

The author visits Walt Disney World with his niece and wife.

Forty years later, John Jeremiah Sullivan visited Disney with his kid and weed.

On June 4, 1989, the bodies of Jo, Michelle and Christe were found floating in Tampa Bay. This is the story of the murders, their aftermath, and the handful of people who kept faith amid the unthinkable.

A profile of Robert Cade, a University of Florida professor and inventor of Gatorade.

God has fled, avenging angels hide out in the Everglades, and more “secret stories” passed down by homeless kids in Miami shelters.

A local boy brings a touch of class to the city on the Bay.

On the 1934 lynching of Claude Neal, and the Florida town that kept the identity of those responsible a secret.

Welcome to Gibsonton, Fla., the carny capital of the nation.

Life as a pageant queen in Plant City, Florida.

They lose millions in a Florida real estate scam.

How the city will drown.

In 1984, Jacqui met Bob Lambert at an animal-rights protest. They fell in love, had a son. Then Bob disappeared. It would take 25 years for Jacqui to learn that he had been working undercover.

Meeting Christopher Thomas Knight, a.k.a. the North Pond Hermit, who lived alone in the Maine woods for nearly 30 years.

Jared Lorenzen was a star quarterback in college. He won a Super Bowl. And just like the author, he has spent his entire life fighting, and losing, a battle with his weight.

In exchange for his surrender, the top Colombian drug lord was allowed to build his own jail, complete with a disco, jacuzzi, and waterfall. Now 23 years later, it’s a home for the elderly.

While war raged across Afghanistan, expats lived in a bubble of good times and easy money. But as the U.S. withdraws, life has taken a deadly turn.

Meet Adam.

“What transpired in the streets appeared to be a kind of municipal version of shock and awe.”

A profile of Thelonious Monk.

How the GOP took control of state politics in Alabama, leaving black lawmakers — and their constituents — powerless.

Catching up with Edward Snowden in Moscow.

“I write this with a baseball bat by the bed.”

What U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul has seen in Russia since he arrived two and a half years ago.

On the history of masturbation.

Louis Scarcella was a star New York City detective in the ’80s and ’90s, cracking cases no one else could. Now it appears that many of the people he put away were innocent, forced into false confessions and convicted with testimony from flimsy witnesses. Scarcella maintains that he did nothing wrong, despite evidence against him much stronger than in many of his cases.

On Stewart Butterfield, the founder of Flickr and now Slack, a wildly popular, difficult-to-describe messaging service that has 38,000 paying subscribers just a few months after launching.