Here at Real Art we wear a lot of hats: designers, engineers, coders, fabricators, makers, and more. But we’re also a tribe with a voracious appetite for reading. Packaged here for your viewing pleasure, please find the crew’s picks for the best longreads of 2016.

David’s Ankles: How Imperfections Could Bring Down the World’s Most Perfect Statue (Sam Anderson / The New York Times)

The story behind the history, the flaws, the reproductions and the potential collapse of Michelangelo’s masterpiece.

What Happened to Eastern Airlines Flight 980? (Peter-Frick Wright / Outside Online)

On New Year’s Day in 1985, Eastern Air Lines Flight 980 was carrying 29 passengers and a hell of a lot of contraband when it crashed into the side of a 21,112-foot mountain in Bolivia. For decades conspiracy theories abounded as the wreckage remained inaccessible, the bodies unrecovered, the black box missing. Then two friends from Boston organized an expedition that would blow the case wide open.

The Secret Lives on Tumblr Teens (Elspeth Reeve / The New Republic)

That feeling when you hit a million followers, make more money than your mom, push a diet pill scheme, lose your blog, and turn 16.

Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered (Michelle Dean / BuzzFeed News)

Dee Dee Blancharde was a model parent: a tireless single mom taking care of her gravely ill child. But after Dee Dee was killed, it turned out things weren’t as they appeared — and her daughter Gypsy had never been sick at all.

How American Politics Went Insane (Jonathan Rauch / The Atlantic)

It happened gradually—and until the U.S. figures out how to treat the problem, it will only get worse.

The Power of Will (Billy Baker / The Boston Globe)

Will Lacey was just a baby when doctors diagnosed a rare form of cancer and told his family there was only one end. Nobody then could imagine the journey ahead, from hospital rooms to board rooms, research labs to government offices, a furious race between hope and death.

“Gosh, It’s Beautiful” (Justin Heckert / ESPN The Magazine)

How did a boring Nintendo game from 1987 become the most coveted cartridge ever? It’s a bit of a mystery.

The Ballad of Fred and Yoko (Will Stephenson / Arkansas Times)

How one of the world’s foremost Beatles collectors died homeless on the streets of Little Rock.

My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard (Shane Bauer / Mother Jones)

In this disturbing, extensive investigation, Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer goes undercover as a private prison guard at a for-profit prison in Winnfield, Lousiana run by the Corrections Corporation of America.

Unearthing the Secrets of New York’s Mass Graves (Nina Bernstein / The New York Times)

Over a million people are buried in the city’s potter’s field on Hart Island. A New York Times investigation uncovers some of their stories and the failings of the system that put them there.

Legalize It All (Dan Baum / Harper’s Magazine)

How to win the war on drugs.

Pete Wells Has His Knives Out (Ian Parker / The New Yorker)

How the New York Times critic writes the reviews that make and break restaurants.

The Reckoning (Pamela Colloff / Texas Monthly)

Fifty years ago, when Claire Wilson was eighteen, she was critically wounded during the 1966 University of Texas Tower shooting—the first massacre of its kind. How does the path of a bullet change a life?

Renting Hell in New York City: How My Hoarder Landlady Ruined My Life (Steven W. Thrasher / The Guardian)

Steven W Thrasher paid $1,000 a month for a Brooklyn renter’s dream: 2,400 square feet of space on a beautiful tree-lined block…that was too good to be true.

Fantastic Fakes: Busting a $70 Million Counterfeiting Ring (Del Quentin Wilber / Bloomberg)

The downfall of a legendary team of forgers, whose bogus bills were so good they’re still in circulation.

The Legend of Elden Kidd, America’s Most Dedicated, Most Creative People Smuggler (Kathy Dobie / GQ)

A decade in the life of our country’s wiliest coyote.

Farm to Fable (Laura Reiley / Tampa Bay Times)

At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction.