The shrinking of the country’s ice sheet is triggering feedback loops that accelerate the global crisis.

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder are often depicted as Type A clean freaks. The reality is much worse.

Black people formed one of the largest militias in the U.S. Now its leader is in prosecutors’ crosshairs.

On cell phones and the decline of public space.

One of the great irritations of modern technology is that when some new development has made my life palpably worse and is continuing to find new and different ways to bedevil it, I'm still allowed to complain for only a year or two before the peddlers of coolness start telling me to get over it already Grampaw--this is just the way life is now.

A sport in flux.

Scenes from the Los Angeles tech boom.

A profile.

Oliver Stone wanted a hit—and the chance to put America’s most iconic dissident onscreen. The subject wanted veto power. The Russian lawyer wanted someone to option the novel he’d written. The American lawyer just wanted the whole insane project to go away. Somehow a film got made.

A central Massachusetts city enabled the author’s ancestors to move into the good life of the middle class. That move is more complicated today.

“What people need to know is we’re not protesting churches. We’re protesting this church.”

What happens after a defendant is found not guilty by reason of insanity? Often the answer is involuntary confinement in a state psychiatric hospital—with no end in sight.

The Mexican novelist and activist talks about the role that the US plays in the hemisphere, and a joint future for North and South America.

We need your memory and your imagination or ours shall never be complete. You need our memory to redeem your past, and our imagination to complete your future. We may be here on this hemisphere for a long time. Let us remember one another. Let us respect one another. Let us walk together outside the night of repression and hunger and intervention, even if for you the sun is at high noon and for us at a quarter to twelve.

For a century, Anglos from cold corners of the country have been lured here by the promise that this was a place where they could live among their own, in communities with nary a brown person in sight.

A profile of Valeria Lukyanova, otherwise known as the “Human Barbie.”

On the star who is re-writing the rules for the next generation.

Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.

Interviews, documents and jailhouse recordings reveal a clearer picture of the life and death of the 26-year-old emergency room technician.

How a small group of gamers has been able to “set the terms of debate in a $100 billion industry, even as they send women like Brianna Wu into hiding and show every sign that they intend to keep doing so until all their demands are met.”

The Piano Man of Yarmouk fled the ruins of Damascus to a life of criss-crossing Germany playing songs about his old neighborhood to huge crowds. Because of refugee law, he is paid nothing.

The author comments on the medium of the graduation cliché while still advancing it:

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about "teaching you how to think". If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think.

Jaroslav Flegr and his theory about Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite found in cat feces:

If Flegr is right, the "latent" parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, "Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year."

A profile of Florida’s former (and perhaps future) governor.

How social media is fanning violence across the globe.

While Facebook and Twitter get the scrutiny, Nextdoor is reshaping politics one neighborhood at a time.