An oral history of Nirvana ‘Unplugged.’

The Piano Man of Yarmouk fled the ruins of Damascus to a life of criss-crossing Germany playing songs about his old neighborhood to huge crowds. Because of refugee law, he is paid nothing.

Africa’s most important economy now appears to function for the benefit of one powerful family—the Guptas.

Was Dr. Alexander Mishkin, Hero of Russia, responsible for the Skripal poisoning?

On the last day of their junior year at Harvard, one roommate kills the other, then hangs herself. The press descends. A year later, a reporter searches for the real story.

There is so much talk now about the art of the film that we may be in danger of forgetting that most of the movies we enjoy are not works of art.

After the horror of ISIS captivity, tens of thousands of Iraqis—many of them children—are caught up in a mental-health crisis unlike any in the world.

Omar Khadr was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2002. He was held in Guantanamo for years without charges. He was tortured. And earlier this month, after nearly 13 years behind bars, he was released on bail.

She longed for black people in America not to be forever refugees—confined by borders that they did not create and by a penal system that killed them before they died.

The United States, which took a forceful stance on other Arab revolts, remained relatively passive in the face of the kingdom’s unrest and crackdown. To many who are familiar with the region, this came as no surprise: of all the Arab states that saw revolts last year, Bahrain is arguably the most closely tied to American strategic interests.

A report on Bahrain, the Arab Spring’s most ill-fated uprising.

When the music of Vivaldi and Mozart are used to repel the homeless from sidewalks and Burger Kings, does it still glorify the dignity of humanity?

A polygamist clan descended from four original families, the Order are believed to run the largest organized crime operation in Utah. When a chest full of gold disappeared, suspicion immediately fell on a group of boys who had split with the cult.

An attempt to make sense of the dog meat industry in Vietnam, an unregulated maze of black market slaughterhouses, home restaurants, and thieves who are often murdered in the open when caught stealing the family pet.

For years, a tactical police unit in Mount Vernon, New York, reigned with impunity—protecting drug dealers, planting evidence, brutalizing citizens. Then one of its own started covertly documenting the abuse.

For almost 20 years, Greg Torti has lived the life of a convicted sex offender—carrying a blue ID card with him at all times, avoiding schools and parks, living on the outskirts of town. It’s a just punishment for the crime, he says. It’s just that he didn’t commit it.

What the neighborhood of Higher Blackley in Manchester says about “one of the least understood and most discriminated-against groups in society.”

The history of a powerful and violent secret society in the islands of southern Chile.

On the death of a young reporter named Christopher Allen and the state of conflict journalism.

In their depictions of domination, the artist’s works, full of world-building and philosophy, do more than flip the script.

From 1968-1973, the three teenage Wiggin sisters, guided by a domineering father, played their strange music at New Hampshire ballrooms and recorded a single album. The Philosophy of the World LP goes for over $500 today, but the intervening decades have not been kind to the Wiggins.

I first learned about cloud lovers in a police report concerning a man who received a blowjob from a young woman and went mad. The man — let's call him Carl (police reports have the names of suspects and victims redacted) — was in his 40s, and the woman, let's call her Lisa, was almost 18. The two first met in the fall of 2003 at a local TV station that was holding a contest to find the best video footage of Northwest clouds. According to the report, which was lost when I cleaned my messy desk in 2005 (I'm recalling all of this from an imperfect memory), Carl, who was married and well-to-do, fell in love with Lisa, whose family was not so well-off, upon seeing her for the first time. He had a videocassette in his hand; she had a videocassette in her hand. He showed his tape to the station's weatherman (sun, sky, clouds). She showed hers (clouds, sky, sun). During the contest, his eyes could not escape her beauty. After the contest, the impression she made on his mind intensified. That bewitching coin in the short story by Jorge Luis Borges, "The Zahir," comes to mind. If a person sees this coin only once, the memory of its image begins to more and more dominate his/her thoughts and dreams. Soon the coin becomes the mind's sole reality. Lisa's face was Carl's Zahir.

Companies are figuring out how to balance what appears to be a lasting shift toward remote work with the value of the physical workplace.

The incentives for and ethics of writing other people’s books.

Searching for the source of British Columbia’s grim flotsam.