The convoy of army trucks, cranes, and flatbeds has been chugging its way under cover of darkness through the craggy mountains of eastern Afghanistan for hours. Now just a few miles from its destination, an outpost in the town of Chamkani, a stone’s throw from the border with Pakistan, the sun is…

Illustrations by Skip Sterling H e’d spent years wondering when the other shoe would drop. The revelation had taken him by surprise — the best possible thing that could have happened under the circumstances, his lawyer said — and yet the promise of it weighed too heavily for him to completely go…

As part of the stories of the year collection, this piece is being resurfaced along with others in the coming days as ESPN Digital and Print Media closes out the year. Check out the full list here. ON THE MORNING of Jan. 17, 2014, Madison Holleran awoke in her dorm room at the University of…

The tracks near East Meadow Drive in Palo Alto, where multiple high school students have gone to die. (1 of 7) "I am not OK, and I can speak for many of my friends at school—we are not OK. I want to feel comfortable at school. I want to enjoy what I’m learning. Right now, I’m doing none of those…

We’ve come up with the menacing term “troll” for someone who spreads hate and does other horrible things anonymously on the Internet. Internet trolls are unsettling not just because of the things they say but for the mystery they represent: what kind of person could be so vile? One afternoon this…

The Films of Hayao Miyazaki Walt Disney Pictures The nominations won’t be announced until Jan. 15, but it’s safe to say that the greatest filmmaker associated with the 2015 Academy Awards has already received his Oscar, delivered a modest but revealing acceptance speech and flown home to Japan and,…

Elissa Strauss | Longreads | May 2015 | 15 minutes (4,006 words) I first noticed “mama” while pregnant with my son in 2012. I was browsing on the internet—familiarizing myself the different types of mothers out there, trying to figure out what kind of mother I might become—when I noticed a number of…

Uncollected garbage burns in Manhattan’s Lower East Side during a period when New York felt close to complete collapse.Photograph: New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images T ravellers arriving at New York City’s airports in June 1975 were greeted with possibly the strangest object ever handed out at…

Photo: Marvel Comics A reboot is a delicate thing. When a once-profitable franchise of characters becomes stale, outdated, or overly complex, there will always be voices calling for the slate to be wiped clean: to take the characters back to their basics, retell their origin stories, make them…

Freedom Detention Firefight Family Onward "I just wish for people to give me a chance" E DMONTON – Omar Khadr is standing in his bedroom looking out at the backyard. It is his second morning of freedom after nearly 13 years behind bars, and he's embarrassed because he doesn't know how to open the…

Dzhokhar, taken by the author in 2006. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not one of my students, but he was someone I would have happily snagged for my classroom. He was in the half of seventh and eighth grade that I didn’t teach and a friend of my advisees. He was soft spoken and polite, and I had a lot of…

It’s not too surprising that Marvel and Fox are engaged in a little “secret war” of their own, over the licensing of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. But as Fox presses forward with movies based on both properties, that war is slowly becoming public. Here’s a guide to how Marvel is trying to erase…

(Photo: Jesse Untracht Oakner) J ’accuse museums of bullshit! Of ­bogusly turning themselves into smash-hit consumer circuses, box-office sensations of voyeurism and hipster showbiz. This year, the institution-­critiquing art known as Relational Aesthetics—essentially audience-participation art,…

They Might Be Giants: John Flansburgh and John Linnell While other artists align themselves with streaming services, the 30-year vets employ kitschy, antiquated tech for song distribution It’s a little bit crazy to think that John Linnell and John Flansburgh have been making music as They Might Be…

Matt Dorfmann David Frakt isn’t easily intimidated by public-speaking assignments. A lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve and a defense attorney, Frakt is best known for securing the 2009 release of the teenage Guantánamo detainee Mohammad Jawad. He did so by helping to convince a military…

U.S. Justice In 2007, the head of the FBI’s Cyber Crime Fraud unit, Leslie Bryant, issued a stern warning to Americans: “You can go to Vegas. You can go to Atlantic City. You can go to a racetrack. You can go to those places and gamble legally. But don’t do it online. It’s against the law.” Four…

Much of Givaudan’s business—which generates nearly four billion dollars a year—is built on deceiving our senses when we eat. The consumption of food flavorings is one of the modern era’s most profound collective acts of submission to illusion. Photographs by Hans Gissinger Growing up, Michelle Hagen…

Italian mobsters climbed by way of crime. For black criminals, the story has changed. Illustration by Leslie Herman. In 1964, the anthropologist Francis Ianni was introduced to a man in a congressional waiting room. His name was Philip Alcamo. People called him Uncle Phil, and he was, in the words…

(Illustration: Emory Allen) Just outside the Benrath Senior Center in Düsseldorf, Germany, is a bus stop at which no bus stops. The bench and the official-looking sign were installed to serve as a “honey trap” to attract patients with dementia who sometimes wander off from the facility, trying to…

Vincent Smothers thought that it would be a job like any other. In the summer of 2007, he told me, his friend Marzell Black asked him for a gun for his mother’s boyfriend. Smothers didn’t sell guns, and he told him so. A few months later, Marzell amended his request, saying, “That dude who was…

Eric Jackson was sitting in his hotel room on Sea Island, Ga., watching his kids splash around in the pool, when he clicked “publish” on his latest blog post for Forbes.com. Jackson, an influential hedge-fund manager, had become fixated on Yahoo and the efforts of its chief executive, Marissa Mayer,…

Curatorial staff and art handlers placing artwork on the sixth floor for the Whitney’s inaugural exhibition,“America Is Hard to See.” The New New Museum How the Whitney might just solve the impossible problem of contemporary art. Curatorial staff and art handlers placing artwork on the sixth floor…

I hear Art Garfunkel before I see him, singing to himself as he drifts across the hotel lobby in a blue T-shirt, heading for the lifts. At 73 his golden curls have become white dandelion seeds, and he is not as tall as you might imagine — an illusion that was probably created during all those years…

Richard Prince’s Instagram screenshots at Frieze Art Fair in New York. (Marco Scozzaro/Frieze) The Internet is the place where nothing goes to die. Those embarrassing photos of your high school dance you marked “private” on Facebook? The drunk Instagram posts? The NSFW snapchats? If you use social…

O n December 2, 2010, FIFA president Sepp Blatter stood before a giant blue screen at his organization’s headquarters in Zurich and announced the two countries that had won the rights to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. After hours of presentations and last-ditch lobbying efforts from Prince…

Six of TV's most provocative female comedians talk sexism, sex scenes, penis bags and why women need to stop apologizing: "I think people hate women. I don't think they want to hear a woman talk for too long," says Schumer. This story first appeared in the June 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter…

…and it sounds like Vitamin D for the soul Act I It’s not everyday you run into Chance The Rapper. Sure, you might bump into him at the airport as he’s coming or going. You might even catch him at an event, with a sea of people following him through the crowd as if he’s our rap savior. But with his…

“His theory is that there’s been a rock opera for every generation since Tommy and The Wall , and the millennials really haven’t had a rock opera. So he hopes it will be Fight Club .” Author Chuck Palahniuk is on the other end of the phone, and I’m struggling to match the calm, thoughtful voice I’m…

Street artist Shepard Fairey and MTV, home to teen moms and teen wolves, are the Felix and Oscar of American culture wars. That they found common ground is something of a triumph. Their web series, Rebel Music , now in its second season , spotlights creative young people who express themselves in a…

B y the time I arrive for my interview backstage at Vancouver’s Rogers Arena, hours before the second show of a 70-date world tour that U2 launched there in the middle of May, one of the world’s most famous and tenured rock bands is the talk of all media. But it’s not for the state-of-the-art stage…

A day after leaving the “Fast and Furious” franchise, Justin Lin got a curious phone call. Lin, who had directed four of the street racing-themed action movies, was asked by Google to collaborate on a very different kind of film project: one that would be available only on mobile phones, and force…

Rap lyrics sure ain’t what they used to be By GZA M usic is forever changing. Hip-hop is not going to be what it was 15 or 20 years ago. Everything changes. There are different sounds, different dances. But at the end of the day, to me it’s all about the lyrics. Hip-hop started with street poets…

Evan Spiegel begins a conversation in the offices of his startup, Snapchat, by propping a sneakered foot onto an Eames chair, leaning back, and acknowledging how infrequently he speaks to the press. “I literally have not done this in so long,” he says, before taking a sip from something called a…

How six female singers and a British alt-pop hero pushed back against misogyny through music By Sarah Gooding Ian Parton’s music production process has always been largely solitary. As the mastermind of The Go! Team, a rambunctious pop project that marries meticulously spliced samples with vigorous…

The Eric Andre Show is the acid trip of the late night circuit. With surreal clips of Andre lighting himself on fire, egging on Buddha and Jesus to beat one another, and chainsawing his penis off, one must wonder: how does he do it? Between scaring make-up counter girls and scarring celebrities,…

Google recently announced that their self-driving car has driven more than a million miles. According to Morgan Stanley, self-driving cars will be commonplace in society by ~2025. This got me thinking about the ethics and philosophy behind these cars, which is what the piece is about. Source: Morgan…

Given that red hair occurs naturally in 1-2% of the population, it makes sense the MC1R protein mutation enjoys a mystique denied its arguably more prosaic cousins. Triss ( The Witcher series) , Ellie ( The Last of Us), Black Widow ( Avengers )—within comics and videogames especially, red-headed…

Rust , a 2013 indie survival game from Facepunch Studios , plays like a cross between Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto. Players find themselves “born” into a mysterious wilderness, naked and alone , forced to forage for resources and to craft clothing, supplies and shelter for themselves. They must…

If you’re like most people on Instagram, you’ll scroll through all 22 filters, carefully consider the nuances of Inkwell vs. Lo-Fi vs. Hudson, and then settle on one of the filters you always use. Oh sure, there are so many filters, but you always go back to your favorites “just because.” Turns out…