At Inhotim, Bernardo Paz commissioned the Jurassic Park of contemporary art. Then the Brazilian government started investigating him.

At the height of the Cold War, America’s most secretive counterespionage effort set out to crack unbreakable ciphers.

On the ethics of putting the internet’s spotlight on a neighborhood restaurant.

Karl Friston’s free energy principle might be the most all-encompassing idea since Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

A profile of the woman who wants to declutter the world.

An interview with Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution.

The passengers of the Diamond Princess came for indulgence, relaxation and bottomless buffets. Then they found themselves trapped on a ship infected with a deadly virus.

On the public-health risks of the American prison system.

Gold mined in the jungles of Peru brought riches to three friends in Miami—but it also carried ruin.

The Texas Department of Transportation intends to spend $25 billion widening highways to fix traffic in Texas cities. What if we tore them down instead?

An excerpt from Darnielle’s debut novel, in which a disfigured man talks to maladjusted teens.

Perpetually reinvented through experimental chemistry, manufactured in Asian mills, packaged in foil with names like White Slut Concentrated and Charley Sheene for use as “hookah cleaner,” distributed in college town head shops, snorted and injected by hardened addicts and high school thrill seekers alike, bath salts may be the strangest and most volatile American drug craze since crack. And they’re (quasi) legal.

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

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

A grandmaster on the computers that have bested him and how we have misunderstood the implications of artificial intelligence.

The detective work that led to the recovery of a trove of stolen Nazi art.

Some of the wealthiest people in America are getting ready for the crackup of civilization.

His hotel heists had detectives convinced they were on the trail of one of the world’s most skilled con-men.

Many people dream of building their own home in the country, but one family finds more of a struggle than they bargained for.

In 1991, Edwin Debrow shot and killed a cab driver on the east side of San Antonio. He was twelve years old. Twenty-five years later, he is still in prison. Is that justice? And is there room for mercy?

A former first-string tackle considers the green zone as a war zone:

Just as football has evolved in accordance with the evolving business ethic of American society, so has it evolved in accordance with the changing strategic assumptions about war. The development (or rebirth) of the T-formation in football coincided almost exactly with the development of a new era of mobility and speed in warfare best exemplified in the Blitzkrieg tactics of the German armies in Europe in 1939-40. The T-formation soon overwhelmed the “Maginot Line” mentality of traditional football, based as it was on rigid lines and massive concentrations of defensive and offensive power.

Beyond the fact that he lacked a pulse, little is known about the man found on an Adelaide beach in 1948.

Bruce Fleming is known for being a chauvinistic, egoistic loudmouth–but firing him has been a lot harder than the Pentagon thought.

A conversation with the author of Calvin and Hobbes.

How the Third Reich was founded on a conspiracy theory.