The behavior geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden is waging a two-front campaign: on her left are those who assume that genes are irrelevant, on her right those who insist that they’re everything.

For decades, flying saucers were a punch line. Then the U.S. government got over the taboo.

How a controversial rationalist blogger became a mascot and martyr in a struggle against the New York Times.

In 1964, with “Seven Up!” Michael Apted stumbled into making what has become the most profound documentary series in the history of cinema. Fifty-five years later, the project is reaching its conclusion.

Geneticists have begun using old bones to make sweeping claims about the distant past. But their revisions to the human story are making some scholars of prehistory uneasy.

Arthur and Kathleen Breitman thought they held the secret to building a new decentralized utopia. On the way, they plunged into a new kind of hell.

How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.

The drunken wedding speeches of Georgia.

A trip to Japan and a glimpse of our automated future.

A sociologist’s controversial first book and the debate over who gets to speak for whom.

In Liberland, a small borderland between Serbia and Croatia, ‘‘government will be banned except for three things: security, legal stuff and diplomacy.’’

A New York gossip reporter makes her way in the wilds of European bureaucracy.

What happens when a successfully funded Kickstarter product fails to launch?

Even an “obstructionist bloc” can’t resist handing prosecutors the indictments they want.

The Interstellar director and the art of the blockbuster cult film.

From Word to smartphones.

The dark side of startup life in Silicon Valley.

An extended version of this story is available as an ebook.</em></p>

A visit to Tokyo’s first co-sleeping cafe, where one can pay a set fee to sleep next to a woman in 20 minute increments, though spooning, being patted on the head, and a change of pajamas are extra.

A field report from Electric Daisy Carnival, a three-night bacchanal in the Las Vegas desert attended by “100,000 wasted hedonists scantily dressed in furry underwear.”

Wandering through the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Exploring the relationship between cats and the Internet in Japan.

Portraits from weed country.