The West Virginia senator reaps big financial rewards from a network of coal companies with grim records of pollution, safety violations, and death.

In Sinaloa, Mexico, women recover the bodies of missing loved ones—and cook to keep their memories of the dead alive.

On Tse Chi Lop, “the Jeff Bezos of the drug trade” and ringleader of a $21-billion crime syndicate.

The creator of Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy offers advice to the Dartmouth class of 2014.

The gangs of Brooklyn’s Brownsville, an area with the higest concentration of public housing in America.

A profile of Michelle Lyons, who viewed 278 executions as both a local reporter and a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The backstory of “The Duke in His Domain,” Truman Capote’s 1957 New Yorker profile of Marlon Brando.

Robert Berman was a passionate and polarizing English teacher at the Horace Mann School. He is also accused of sexually abusing many of his devoted students.

On Japan’s Hokkaido, an island the size of Ireland, and its rebel leader of lore, Shakushain.

How a secretive Israel billionaire seized control of an untapped iron ore deposit beneath one of Africa’s poorest countries.

A 22,000-word breakdown of Kubrick’s “odyssey portraying the span of millennia.”

He outsold Elvis, signed one of the first pay-for-play contracts and befriended Martin Luther King Jr. A profile of Harry Belafonte.

Searching for the real reason why a bunch of kids partying at the empty home of an NFL player became a national story.

On the foreign workers of Dubai, who now make up 90 percent of the city’s population.

The dissolution of Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng’s marriage amidst evidence of her affairs with Tony Blair and Eric Schmidt.

“Radically brilliant. Absurdly ahead of its time. Ridiculously poorly planned.” An oral history of the National Sports Daily.

A profile of Jaron Lanier, virtual reality pioneer and the author of You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.

Three decades ago, Mohamed Siad Barre, commander of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, head of the politburo of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party and the last ruler of a functional Somali state, built vast concrete buildings all over Mogadishu. The beautiful city on the coast of the Indian Ocean, with its Arabic and Indian architecture, winding alleyways and Italian colonial-era villas, was dominated by these monuments. They were Third World incarnations of Soviet architecture, exuding power, stability and strength. The buildings – like the literacy campaigns, massive public works programmes and a long war against neighbouring Ethiopia in the late 1970s and early 1980s – were supposed to reflect the wisdom and authority of the dictator.

A profile of Harold Camping, a Christian radio host who (falsely) predicted the end of the world.

A memory of interviewing the late great songwriter Townes Van Zandt shortly before his death.

A profile of Harold Ramis, director of Groundhog Day, who died today.

A profile of the Bronx immigrant family on the other end of your Chinese takeout menu.

From a small Ohio town to Afghanistan, a portrait of the perpetrator of a massacre.

How group of misfits in Texas including Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings snubbed Nashville and brought the hippies and rednecks together. An oral history of outlaw country.

The story of Trina Garnett, “one of approximately 470 prisoners in Pennsylvania serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers.”