Assessing 40 years of treatment.

My abiding faith in the possibility of self-transformation propelled me from one therapist to the next, ever on the lookout for something that seemed tormentingly out of reach, some scenario that would allow me to live more comfortably in my own skin. For all my doubts about specific tenets and individual psychoanalysts, I believed in the surpassing value of insight and the curative potential of treatment — and that may have been the problem to begin with.

A journalist on the lingering effects of escaping a kidnapping.

A snitch comes clean.

Meet Ben Sherwood, the new head of the Disney/ABC Television Group.

What one sergeant says he saw before the alleged suicides of three detainees.

The writer’s obsession with a genus of snake known as “indigo.”

The last trip of a dedicated wanderer.

A breakdown of the early 80s homeless epidemic.

Inside the Shel Silverstein archive.

One of the things you learn is that “polymath” doesn’t even begin to describe Silverstein. His creativity extended in so many directions that his archivists must be versed not just in turn-of-the-century world children’s literature, but Waylon Jennings’s deep cuts; not just in reel-to-reel tape preservation, but how to keep an old restaurant napkin scribbled with lyrics from falling apart.

Joining the water company’s “flushermen” to tour London’s sewers.

A profile of 6’8”, 430-pound Brian Shaw.

An exposé of extralegal killing.

The oracular works of Philip K. Dick.

How the hospitality world rents space for physicians to train.

An essay about the weeks after the author’s brother nearly died.

“It was a clusterfuck of clusterfucks.”

On the 13-member rap collective Brockhampton.

As early as 1948, the Oscars sucked.

How a journeyman actor became a star.

What happens when immigrant-rights advocates reach a breaking point?

A portrait of a new nation.

On the search for migrants lost at sea and the families left behind.

Pimp, brawler, Old Master.