Navigating life as a brilliant teenage girl.

America’s underground Chinese restaurant workers.

A profile of Merle Haggard.

A profile of Henry Hook, crossword puzzle master.

On boxer Canelo Alvarez.

Adventures at a gathering of furries.

INTERVIEWER: I imagine that people try to set you up as some sort of guru, whether political or metaphysical.

LESSING: I think people are always looking for gurus. It’s the easiest thing in the world to become a guru. It’s quite terrifying.

In the summer of 1982, three Waco teenagers were savagely murdered for no apparent reason. Four men were ultimately charged with the crime. One was executed, two others were given life sentences, and a fourth was sent to death row only to be released after six years. They all may have been innocent.

In the 1880’s, a shabbily dressed man popped up in numerous America cities, calling upon local scientists, showing letters of introduction claiming he was a noted geologist or paleontologist, discussing both fields at a staggeringly accomplished level, and then making off with valuable books or cash loans.

On Lance Armstrong’s return to racing after cancer.

In the ’50s and ’60s, the Reverend Will Campbell marched with MLK Jr. and worked to desegregate the University of Mississippi. Later, broke, he took a job as Waylon Jennings’ roadie and occasional spiritual guru. Afterward, his ministry grew even stranger and more itinerant.

On a 1955 ferris wheel accident.

Tracking Spalding Grey’s descent towards suicide.

An examination of Mitt Romney’s record on abortion.

A father and his daughter’s brain tumor.

How “tissue engineering” will change regenerative medicine.

An ode to mayonnaise.

Henry Heimlich saved untold choking victimes when he invented his maneuver in 1974. Since then, he’s searched in vain for another miracle treatment—pushing ethical boundaries along the way. Now at the end of his career, Heimlich has hired an investigator to find an anonymous critic working full-time to destroy his legacy.

A Taliban intelligence chief’s death and resurrection.

A profile of Erykah Badu.

The Cosmo editor and author of Sex and the Single Girl’s rocky real-life relationships.

After Moneyball became a best-seller, Michael Lewis learned that many of the ideas it presented to the general public had actually been introduced decades earlier by a pair of Israeli psychologists.

Adapted from The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds.

A wandering long-distance canoeist goes missing.