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.

During New York’s ’80s and ’90s crack epedemic, a flashy detective who “imagined himself a crusader who created his own rules” and his star witness, a crack addicted prostitute who seemed to constantly be at the scene of homicides, sent dozens of men to prison for life. Now, they are under investigation.

An essay on Alcor – “the Arizona cryonics company that has put the body of Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams in cryogenic suspension, in the hope he may one day rise again” – and the desire to live forever.

Murderous editors, allegations of insanity, connections to the Church of Satan, illegal predatory-pricing schemes, and more than $21 million on the line—the crazy alt-weekly war in San Francisco has it all.

Mince pie was once more American than the apple variety. It was also blamed for “bad health, murderous dreams, the downfall of Prohibition, and the decline of the white race,” among other things. Then it disappeared.

How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific

Every year eleven million people attend Magh Mela, a Hindu festival on the banks of the Ganges. The temporary infrastructure to support them includes hospitals and power stations, plus a massive surveillance apparatus.

The fire department working a desolate New Mexico mesa is made up of 15 anarchists and recluses and led by a friendly giant whose job is to be an administrator in a place that defies administration.

For generations, plantation owners strove to keep black laborers on the farm and competing businesses out of town. Today, the towns faring best are the ones whose white residents stayed to reckon with their own history.

An oral history of the most important deal in sports TV history, when Rupert Murdoch and Fox stole the NFL and John Madden out from under the Big Three networks and launched a television empire.

The weakest link in America’s national security may not be foreign technology but its own people. The story of the single mother who sold out to China.

Ten years ago, the tax agency formed a special team to unravel the complex tax-lowering strategies of the nation’s wealthiest people. It never had a chance.

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.

The story behind “the best brisket you’ll ever eat.”