When the author’s wife was dying, his best friend moved in.

How a touring dance company battles the Chinese Communist Party.

There is someone whose job it is to try to extract royalty money from anyone who plays music in a place of business. Most people do not react well to this request.

“There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them—but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.”

Will Vinton created the California Raisins, coined the term “claymation” and had a firm making $28 million a year in the late 1990s. By 2002, he was out of a job, replaced by a failed rapper who had gone by the name “Chilly Tee” and also happened to be the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight.

In November 2012, Salvador Alvarenga went fishing off the coast of Mexico. Two days later, a storm hit and he made a desperate SOS. It was the last anyone heard from him—for 438 days.

As the head of the CBF, Ricardo Teixera rules Brazilian futebol from the top down, controlling everything from the value of championships to broadcast rights. He needs the pull off a flawless 2014 World Cup in order to set the stage for being elected FIFA’s president, but there’s one hitch; the trail of bribes and scandals he has left in his wake.

Whenever you want him to go on the record, Teixeira shushes you and raises a finger to his lips.  He addresses men and women alike as “meu amor,” with an exaggerated Rio accent. “Meu amor, it’s all been said about me – that I smuggled goods in the Brazilian national team’s airplane, that there’s been dirty dealing in the World Cup, all those investigations into Nike and the CBF."

Translated from the original Portugese.

A little after 9 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1990, the owner of a steel-products company pulled up to her office in Vinegar Hill, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and spotted a black garbage bag sitting on the sidewalk out front. She parked her car and went to move the bag when she noticed it leaking blood. The woman called 911. Within the hour, Ken Whelan, a homicide detective from the 84th Precinct, peered into the bag. It was full of human body parts.

“They have effectively claimed the progressive causes of the left – from gay rights to women’s equality and protecting Jews from antisemitism – as their own, by depicting Muslim immigrants as the primary threat to all three groups. As fear of Islam has spread, with their encouragement, they have presented themselves as the only true defenders of western identity and western liberties – the last bulwark protecting a besieged Judeo-Christian civilisation from the barbarians at the gates.”

A profile of the reclusive billionaire who orchestrated a collectible toy craze.

Policing the world of experimental research in the age of TED talks and Freakonomics.

The fall of PCCare247, an Indian company in the business of selling fixes to problems that didn’t exist.

A profile of Malala Yousafzai, the young activist from Pakistan who was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

What the Chinese education system can teach America about relying on test scores as the main metric of success.

Alfred Dellentash Jr. chartered the Rolling Stones in private jets while smuggling planeloads of Pablo Escobar’s drugs on the side.

On CEO Reed Hastings and the future of Netflix.

Mementos left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the man in charge of cataloging them.

Three boys falsely accused of murder, and what the twenty-year saga says about all of us.

The mysterious life and death of Dow B. Hover, the man who ran New York’s electric chair.

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

An interview on craft.

Michael Quinn took on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – and lost.

William Nowell got a windfall and got off the streets. The only problem were his neighbors – and his odor.

The legendary artist has radically upended his distinctive style of portraiture—and his entire life. Why?