Boomtown San Francisco, as seen from the Google Bus.

What climate change means for kids in New York.

A profile of the director and actor.

A profile of Joss Sackler.

How David Bazan’s music inspired a generation of young, questioning Christians.

The crowdfunded phone of the future was a multimillion-dollar scam

The rise and stunning collapse of a cybersecurity firm.

Uncovering evidence of unequal treatment by real estate agents.

We all die immediately of a Brazilian butt lift.

An exchange on faith and politics in America.

On the pseudo-brands of Amazon.

On loving and hating and living in Manhattan.

One man’s quest to save the music of the Holocaust.

The story of ‘Kai the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker.’

On the future of air travel.

The Canadian scapegoat of the AIDS epidemic.

After centuries of persecution, brown bears are showing up in some unexpected places.

Adventures with the Wolf of Weed Street.

On the joy of watching Roger play live at Wimbledon.

A study of resilience in does and other female creatures.

An oral history of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

A profile of the actor.

A man is presumed murdered. In this town of 12, everyone is a possible suspect.

An eccentric monk’s singular scrap cathedral reveals the chaos and genius of his mind.

In the fantasy and superhero realm, the most chilling and compelling villain of the year was surely Magneto, who in X-Men: First Class is more of a proto-villain, a victim of human cruelty with a grudge against the nonmutants of the world rooted in bitter and inarguable experience. Magneto is all the more fascinating by virtue of being played by Michael Fassbender, the hawkishly handsome Irish-German actor whose on-screen identity crises dominated no fewer than four movies in 2011. Magneto, more than the others, also evokes a curious kind of self-reproach, because his well-founded vendetta is, after all, directed against us.