The Brooklyn Nets were built to be an unbeatable superteam of eccentric basketball superstars. Will they dominate the N.B.A. playoffs?

For half a century, she has taken the things we know best— our bodies, our rituals, our nation — and shown us how strange they really are.

What will we lose when Najin and Fatu die?

Against all odds, it really was a refuge of competence, normalcy and transcendent play. But the outside world has a way of sneaking in.

National economies collapse; species go extinct; political movements rise and fizzle. But—somehow, for some reason—Weird Al keeps rocking.

How the writer works.

Visiting a gargantuan shrine to democracy in 2017.

A profile of the Oklahoma City point guard, who is averaging a triple-double in his first season without Kevin Durant.

On the coach’s battle with retirement.

“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.

From Tetris to Angry Birds, an examination of “stupid games.”

On literary tourism:

Dickens World, in other words, sounded less like a viable business than it did a mockumentary, or a George Saunders short story, or the thought experiment of a radical Marxist seeking to expose the terminal bankruptcy at the heart of consumerism. And yet it was real.

A profile of the writer.

On the life and career of Chris Farley.

Soap operas, enrollment in multiple graduate programs at once, student films alongside Hollywood blockbusters. Is James Franco’s entire career a piece of performance art?

Born in Germany, raised in Montana, now living in New York, comedian Reggie Watts describes his style as “culture sampling.”