The antics in postwar Nordic children’s books left propaganda and prudery behind. We need this madcap spirit more than ever.

For a few days in 1995, many Indians believed a religious idol had developed a lifelike ability to drink milk.

Uber made big promises in Kenya. Drivers say it’s ruined their lives.

What’s a typical immigrant story? In his new film, “Minari,” the “Walking Dead” star has his own to tell.

How homelessness is criminalized in small cities and towns across the West.

Before a disastrous blight, the American chestnut was a keystone species in eastern forests. Could genetic engineering help bring it back?

The world’s greatest animator, Yuri Norstein, hasn’t released a new film in 37 years.

Deana Lawson’s regal, loving, unburdened photographs imagine a world in which Black people are free from the distortions of history.

Growth has slowed to a trickle in parts of Manchuria—but some young people are finding new careers online.

The Havana Syndrome first affected spies and diplomats in Cuba. Now it has spread to the White House.

In Scott Kimball, the FBI thought it had found a high-value informant who could help solve big cases. What it got instead was lies, betrayal, and murder.

When a rash of sensational museum robberies stunned Europe, police zeroed in on a fearsome crime family—and a flashy new generation of young outlaws.

Their boat gone, they spent five days in the Atlantic Ocean without food or water, surrounded by sharks.

Why did Christie Smythe upend her life and stability for Martin Shkreli, one of the least-liked men in the world?

Inside the political battle over reproductive rights in Texas a decade ago.

Awash in coders, crypto, and capital, the city is loving—and beginning to shape—its newest industry.

393 Powell Street was a peaceful home until residents started dying in brutal, mysterious ways.

Since she first started working in the hospitality industry two decades ago, Vida Afram has cleaned nearly 60,000 hotel rooms.

How online sales of highly regulated, super-toxic rodenticides exploit gaps in the law and imperil wildlife.

Chains, knives, fists, and, of course, those crude and unreliable homemade affairs called zip guns were the staples in the more vicious gang wars in the 1940s and 1950s. Today there is scarcely a gang in the Bronx that cannot muster a factory-made piece for every member—at the very least, a .22-caliber pistol, but quite often heavier stuff: .32s, .38s, and .45s, shotguns, rifles, and—I have seen them myself—even machine guns, grenades, and gelignite, an explosive. One gang, the Royal Javelins, has acquired some walkie-talkie radios.

Interviews with modern travelling salesmen. The article inspired Kirn’s novel Up in the Air.

What makes this a truly military culture, besides its overwhelming maleness, its air of emotional deprivation and the lousy rations, is its obsession with rank and hierarchy. Like jungle gorillas, business travelers always know where they stand versus the rest of the group. In this parallel universe of upgrade vouchers and priority-boarding privileges, everyone has a number and a position, and who gets that open aisle seat in first class means even more on the road then who earns what.

I've grown, over the last few months, the beginnings of concerned; he's started to suffer bouts of malaise. Nothing too regular, or too terrible: mild stomach aches, sore joints, general lethargy. In anyone else, it could be anything, etc. In Chad, I grow attuned to the slightest variation in temperature, to the distracted look behind his eyes when food isn't sitting with him.

As Playboy magazine moves to Los Angeles, the writer considers its place in the Midwest.

No other general interest magazine tried to reach readers in the wide swathe of land between New York and California. “It was a Midwestern magazine, designed for people there. If you wanted it to be hip, edgy, go toe-to-toe with GQ, you were making a mistake,” said Chris Napolitano, a former executive editor who began at Playboy in 1988.