Tag Archives: long-reads

D riving north on state Route 56 as you enter Jackson County, Tennessee, the road winds through lush, green hills, past a few homes, an abandoned auto shop, and the Country Cabin Quik Market before reaching a large billboard. Pull forward into the parking lot of Fatboy’s Barbie-Q, where sweet, …

B yron Walker knew he was in trouble. He’d been late for the Riverside Church Hawks team van departing Upper Manhattan for a tournament in Massachusetts one spring morning in 1977. When the Riverside squad — part of the top teenage-basketball travel program in the country — arrived for its …

Toward the end of March, Rachel Ganz had what she calls “a premonition of doom.” At the time, she couldn’t quite explain this foreboding. She and her husband, Jon Ganz, ages 45 and 49, respectively, were in the midst of what should have been a happy milestone: The couple were …

I t’s early August, and Latin Mafia just stepped offstage at Lollapalooza. Even though they’re taking a break at a nearby dining hall, they’re absolutely buzzing with energy. It’s hard to turn that live-wire adrenaline off; they spent the entire set crowd-surfing over screaming fans and inciting mosh pits as …

A chance to meet Beyoncé would be a huge deal for anyone, but it was especially monumental for Brazilian powerhouse Ludmilla. After all, she began her career performing under the name “MC Beyoncé,” a teenage tribute to the idol. “Imagine the day I meet Beyoncé,” she tweeted in 2015. “I …

T heir real life was about to slip into fantasy, which was pretty much the plan. At the tail end of the 1960s, Roger Taylor and Freddie Bulsara would lie on the floor together, head to head, getting lost in Electric Ladyland, talking about their future. Maybe they’d share a …

O utside a botanical garden gift shop on the northern shore of the most remote place on earth, rests a reproduction of an ancient board game, chiseled into a block of black stone, its 88 rocks and coral bits resting in 88 divots as if waiting for you to play. …

K irk West didn’t look like a man trying to slip out of town unnoticed. Dressed in a $350 black-and-gold Versace-style shirt with a dragon perched on a champagne bottle on the back, the six-foot-six entrepreneur carried himself with the same air of confidence he’s projected for years. Yet, as …

This story was produced in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom TYPE INVESTIGATIONS and THE MARGUERITE CASEY FOUNDATION. AS SOON AS THEY TAKE OFF from the Panamanian coast, there is a sigh of relief. Surrounded by 30 other Venezuelan migrants, packed inside an overloaded midsize speedboat, Edinson holds on tightly to …

I t was nearly midnight in February 2021 when Nasir Andar’s team of soldiers pinpointed the location of the suicide bomber’s house behind a police station in Jalalabad, a city in eastern Afghanistan. They crept up to the gate and called up the rest of the assault force, who would …