A profile of Zack Snyder, director of Watchmen, Dawn of the Dead, and the upcoming Superman series.

The placebo response doesn't care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapists, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better.

Eagleman, a neuroscientist, describes how groundbreaking advances in the science of brain have changed our understanding of volition in criminal acts, and may erode the underpinnings of our justice system.

The underground culture of big waves and wild times in 1961 Malibu, and the gang of teenage boys who worshiped at the feet of the beach’s dark prince, surfing legend and grifter Miki Dora.

A 2003 essay that foreshadows the emergence of the Islamic State a decade later – an insurgency incited by American policy in Iraq during the early days of the war.

Critics call it “the radio of pimps and vagina-sellers.” But a popular new call-in show is helping a generation of Afghans navigate a battlefield full of strife and confusion and fear: modern love.

In Arkansas, a small cottage industry of lawyers arranges adoptions of the babies of Marshall Islands immigrants. But are parents only giving up their children based on a cultural misunderstanding?

The story of the most popular music video of all time, including memories of a then-25-year-old Michael Jackson on and off the set. Director John Landis: “I dealt with Michael as I would have a really gifted child.”

Mykal Riley’s last-second three-pointer kept thousands of fans out of the path of a tornado. Just as remarkable? That Riley was there to take the shot in the first place.

A profile of Francis Collins, a fervent Christian, former head of the Human Genome Project and Obama’s appointee to head N.I.H., now at the center of the stem cell research debate.

What happened when the founder of North Face and Esprit bought a chunk of Chile the size of a small state, intending to live with a select group inside it and turn it case study for ecological preservation. It turned out, however, that Chileans didn’t really like that idea.

In 1993 a black teenager in London was randomly stabbed to death by a gang of white youths. Twenty years later, they would be at the center of the trial of the decade.

On the eve of the Civil War, a nightmare at sea turned into one of the greatest rescues in maritime history. More than a century later, a rookie treasure hunter went looking for the lost ship—and found a different kind of ruin.

In 1942, a volley of torpedoes sent the U.S.S. Wasp to the bottom of the Pacific. Earlier this year, a team of wreck hunters set out to find it.

On the rise of telemedicine in rural America, where the number of ER patients has surged by 60 percent in the past decade as the number of doctors and hospitals has declined by up to 15 percent.

Once pigeonholed as “the hottest blonde ever,” the star of Birds of Prey has become one of Hollywood’s most promising producers.

Before I learned about beauty, I delighted in my body. I sensed a deep well at my center, a kind of umbilical cord that linked me to a roiling infinity of knowledge and pathos that underlay the trivia of our daily lives.

Today, artificial intelligence and information technologies have absorbed many of the questions that were once taken up by theologians and philosophers: the mind’s relationship to the body, the question of free will, the possibility of immortality.

A pair of undercover journalists, a boatload of refugees, 200 miles of ocean and a journey that has claimed more than a thousand lives.

“There’s a lot of disorder that comes along with wanting to know everything and wanting to try everything and wanting to experience everything, but there’s a lot of knowledge that comes out of it too.”

The origin story of the C.I.A.’s covert drone war, which began with the 2004 killing of a Pashtun militant, the result of a secret deal for access to Pakistani airspace.

The fall of Richard Roberts, anointed son and successor of televangelist Oral Roberts, who was fired as president of Oral Roberts University and evicted from the home he’d lived in for nearly 50 years.

Fuzzy memories of a house overlooking the Sunset Strip that played host to a generation of comics—including Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay, and Robin Williams—launching dozens of careers and about as many drug problems.

“Be careful. The toe you stepped on yesterday may be connected to the ass you have to kiss today.”

A profile of the late Buddy Cianci, who was twice forced to resign as mayor of Providence after being convicted of felonies.

Intended for cremation, 244 bodies are instead harvested for organs and tissue. The story of the families of the dead, the men who profited off the scheme, and the unwitting recipients of black market body parts.