Longreads

The middle class is shrinking. As the Internet has wildly expanded our options, it has, paradoxically, shrunk our horizons: as thinkers like Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform, warn, a generic set of crowd-pleasing blockbusters dominates more than ever.

This week, Al Goldstein—the oversized pornographer with the oversized mouth and libido—died of renal failure. Our writer tracks the Screw founder from his humble, filthy beginnings to his deathbed in Brooklyn, days before he passed.

To those deemed worthy, six weeks at the MacDowell Colony bring new work, friendships, and great meals. Compare this to the Canadian model, in which artists (even emerging ones) receive just enough to live on from governments. Which way works best?

Jamie Gillis’ On the Prowl was the first gonzo porn video ever shot, spawning a genre that now dominates the Internet, and the minds of many men. But is gonzo today what its creator—intellectual, urbane, disgusting, and sometimes downright evil—had in mind?

Karyn Kupcinet, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Mary Pinchot Meyer had little in common in life. In death, however, they share one particular indignity: having their untimely ends overshadowed by the ever-churning John F. Kennedy conspiracy machine.

There is music and rhythm and beauty and joy to be found in both Jerusalem and Ramallah—despite the outrages, honest and otherwise, readily available in the space between.

How the case surrounding the founder of the popular hot yoga brand is intensifying with new allegations of harassment, discrimination, sexual assault and rape, which he denies. For the first time one of Bikram's accusers speaks to the media. The first article in a series.

Scenes from a 10-day road trip across the United States.

After the recent spate of heart-rending, very public teen suicides, Alexandra Kimball navigates the murky channels of suicide, its coverage by the media, and the contagion effect.