Top 10 Magazine Articles of 2011

The year's best magazine articles cover everything from Scientology to conjoined twins to religious slavery in a Louisiana prison. Slate lists 10 favorites via Longform.org, including:

• "The Apostate," The New Yorker. Famed Hollywood screenwriter Paul Haggis reveals his falling out with the Church of Scientology. "I just went along, to my shame," Haggis says. "I did what was easy ... without asking them, or myself, any hard questions."

• "The Movie Set That Ate Itself," GQ. "Madman" director Ilya Khrzhanovsky assembled a cast of thousands in a Ukrainian city, built a totalitarian society, and filmed his actors all the time. "He looks completely, utterly delighted."
• "Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?" New York Times Magazine. Twins Krista and Tatiana Hogan are joined at the head, with a unique neural anatomy. "Their brain images reveal what looks like an attenuated line stretching between the two organs. ... One girl drinks, another girl feels it."
• "Dispatch From Angola," Colorlines. Inmates working hard labor on 18,000 acres of Louisiana farmland are ordered to believe in God. "Choosing not to do what God commands is rebellion, and such disobedience has consequences," says a former prisoner.

See the rest of Slate's list here. (More Best of 2011 stories.)