The Giant Pacific Octopus is, in the words of a Seattle conservationist, a “glamour animal.” It is also tasty. Therein lies the conflict.

The world’s most famous child star grows up.

A woman starts a new job with a massive, all-knowing social media company; an excerpt from Eggers' The Circle, coming in October.

"Mae looked at the time. It was 6 o’clock. She had plenty of hours to improve, there and then, so she embarked on a flurry of activity, sending 4 zings and 32 comments and 88 smiles. In an hour, her PartiRank rose to 7,288. Breaking 7,000 was more difficult, but by 8, after joining and posting in 11 discussion groups, sending another 12 zings, one of them rated in the top 5,000 globally for that hour, and signing up for 67 more feeds, she’d done it. She was at 6,872, and she turned to her InnerCircle social feed. She was a few hundred posts behind, and she made her way through, replying to 70 or so messages, RSVPing to 11 events on campus, signing nine petitions and providing comments and constructive criticism on four products currently in beta."

Rosario Crocetta is a reform-minded leader in a highly corrupt place that hates change. That’s only one of the reasons his life is in danger.

On the best teacher the writer ever had.

A profile of Elizabeth Gilbert, whose bestselling memoir may have sunk her literary career.

A 27-year old reporter is kidnapped in Somalia and held hostage for over a year.

A case of mistaken identity and the incarceration of an innocent man.

A profile of the actor.

A profile of documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who last January received “a curious e-mail from an anonymous stranger requesting her public encryption key.”

“You know a storm is going to be bad, people in Oklahoma will tell you, when Gary England removes his jacket.” A profile of a meteorologist who has worked Tornado Alley for more than 40 years.

Women who left their careers to be stay-at-home mothers reflect on the decision ten years later.

Inside a family of novelists.

The misidentification of a Boston Marathon bomber and the future of breaking news.

Team America voyages to Jordan’s King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center to compete against top-seeded China and other squads in challenges based on counter-terrorism scenarios.

How a bioethicist’s field of study—suicide, euthanasia, a dignified death—”turned unbearably personal.”

Jurors from the Emmett Till trial revisit the case 50 years later.

A profile of the writer behind “Deep Thoughts” on Saturday Night Live.

How Gaby Hoffman, who had roles in Field of Dreams, Uncle Buck and Sleepless in Seattle, survived child stardom.

The rise and fall and rise of Hill flack Kurt Bardella, and what it says about D.C. culture.

After being fired from both Nirvana and Soundgarden, Jason Everman joined the Special Forces.

The long, strange trip of the Wikipedia founder, who went from being an Insane Clown Posse fan who owned the “Bomis Babe Report” to a jet-setter married to “the most connected woman in London,” all without turning much of a profit.

On living in Syria as an Alawite loyalist.

On an artist who’s spent nearly 50 years bending the rules of space and light, and his life’s work, an extinct volcano in Arizona where he has been developing a network of tunnels and underground rooms since 1974.

The Yale professor suspected of murdering his student.