On Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who pushed America to war. Chalabi died on Tuesday at the age of 71.

Will LaFever never felt right in the world. So he took to the Utah desert, barely making it out alive.

“Remember why we’re here: to empower the child. If you can’t handle it, keep your shades on.”

A profile of Kehinde Wiley, a painter who inserts the “brown faces” that have historically been relegated to the background in Western art.

Dillie Nerios’s job is to convince people food is a right, not a luxury.

A trip to a pepper-eating contest in remote India.

A startup’s plan to launch a fleet of cheap, small, ultra-efficient imaging satellites and revolutionize data collection.

After two tours in Iraq, the writer returns to a volatile region of Afghanistan as an embedded journalist.

Departing Marrakech by car with a plan to record music for the Library of Congress.

Parking garages, prisons, freeways and the world of stuff we’re not supposed to look at.

The railroad foreman’s brain was pierced by a tamping iron. He lived to tell the tale.

How a bipolar diagnosis follows you from the top to the bottom of professional basketball.

How the Gingrich-era brain drain crippled the government and led to last year’s shutdown.

A 2011 profile of LeBron James, originally meant to run in Port, that was killed by Nike.

On Singapore’s attempt to create a more harmonious society using mass surveillance and data analysis.

“What transpired in the streets appeared to be a kind of municipal version of shock and awe.”

On the anger that led to the Watts Riots of 1965, the mistakes made during those six days in August, and how little changed afterward.

Established media companies used to sue YouTube. Now they’re betting on it.

Elon Musk’s dreams of colonizing Mars.

On the seminal songwriter, who died four years ago today, in his final days before succumbing to dipsomania.

The story of John Laroche, which led to Orleans’ The Orchid Thief, and tangentially, the film Adaptation.