The author travels to Mexico to meet a retired assassin and kidnapper, now himself a target of the cartels that once employed him.

“The echoing horror of slavery cuts both ways. We are often afraid to say what we know is true. The South is disaster and it is also miracle.”

Can we treat psychosis by listening to the voices in our heads?

An argument for working less.

What we get wrong about the opioid crisis.

The strange history of border fortifications.

The transgender community fights for health care.

A young couple, their warring families, and the risks of marrying for love in India.

Conversations with the petroleum brotherhood in the UAE.

The quest to control hurricanes.

A travelogue through the contradiction-rich and predominantly Muslim Southern Thailand.

In Cuba, hand-delivered hard drives bring the web into people’s homes.

The women of the alt-right.

“The last time I ate real food, actually chewed and swallowed, was six years ago.”

An essay on power.

On race and risk in American culture.

A tuberculosis crisis in the rural South.

On H.H. Holmes “an old hand at corpse manipulation and insurance fraud,” who built a house of death in 1890s Chicago.

Attending the two-day-long “Crap$ 101” course, where aspiring craps players learn the Golden Touch system of betting, visualize dice tosses, and pursue the elusive “controlled throw.”

A personal account of the human network behind the leak.

To be mentally ill in Ghana.

“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.”

The story of The Anarchist Cookbook and why its creator, William Powell, regrets writing the book.

The ragged glory of female activism.

Mapping the global spread of antigay ideology.