An essay about the weeks after the author’s brother nearly died.

On the nature of coincidence.

Meet Mel Bernstein. He goes by the name Dragonman, and he’s one of the largest independent purveyors of firearms in the western United States, and the self-proclaimed most armed man in America. At Dragonland—his home, shop, shooting range, and military museum outside Colorado Springs—no gun sells quicker than the weapon used in the most recent mass shooting. Amidst a new gun conversation, it’s business as usual. But even here, it turns out there’s a price to pay.

How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia.

Carried away by love—for risk and for each other—two of the world’s best freedivers went to the limits of their sport. Only one came back.

He was a college freshman partying in Manhattan for the first. He ran into a woman he knew from college, got separated from his friends, and ended up at a house party full of strangers. By the next morning, his body would be dumped in a Brooklyn driveway. Fifteen years later, the “circumstances of his death remain muddled.”

The disappearance of a once ubiquitous movie star.

Wealthy businessman Merv Bodnarchuk put together the dream team of curling. Then he put himself in the lineup.

Developed by early computer engineers in their spare time, improved in University comp-sci labs, and ultimately sold in coffeeshops for ten cents per game. Inside one of the most influential games ever played.

“The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront everyday.”

An Afghanistan love story.

When Clark Rockefeller snatched his daughter during a custody dispute, what the D.A. called “the longest con I’ve seen in my professional career” came unraveled, and the trail led to bones buried in a California backyard.

“This baby was unviable, basically. That’s what they say. They say that the baby is ‘incompatible with life.’”

A profile of Paul Manafort, “a great normalizer of corruption” who “weakened the capital’s ethical immune system.”

Ray Bowman and Billy Kirkpatrick, who began boosting together as teenagers, were arrested only twice during their prolific partnership. The first time was for stealing 38 records from a K-Mart in 1974. The second arrest came in 1997. In between, Bowman and Kirkpatrick robbed 27 banks, including the single biggest haul in United States history: $4,461,681 from the Seafirst Bank in suburban Tacoma.

It was burned and sunk to hide the crime. Now its probable remains have been located.

“There’s always room for another story. There’s always room for another tune.”

Facebook was supposed to open up societies like Cambodia—but instead it has wreaked havoc on the fragile political order and destroyed opposition leadership.

Forgetting a child in the backseat of a car is a horrifying mistake. But is it a crime?

On the moral responsibility to break unjust laws.

“Was she supposed to play by the rules and let her talent rot inside her extraordinary body? She’s saying that for girls like her, playing nice and fair would have gotten her nowhere. If it had worked out, we would say she was the manifestation of the American dream. Now instead we just say she’s very American.”

“We know we down in this shithole together.”

Life as a New York Times reporter in the shadow of the war on terror.

On the centuries-long search for the perfect hangover remedy.