As the country heads into a dangerous new phase of the pandemic, the government’s management of the P.P.E. crisis has left the private sector still straining to meet anticipated demand.

Hamid Abd-Al-Jabbar and David Thompson bonded in juvenile detention in the 1980s, then spent most of the next 40 years in prison. When they emerged from one of the country’s most unforgiving state penal systems, their friendship proved crucial.

“The remains of a sunken village nearby make me realize that the process is inexorable. Of this seventy-five-house village, there is almost nothing left.”

Amid the complex web of international trade, proving the authenticity of a product can be near-impossible. But one company is taking the search to the atomic level.

Is a well-received work of William Faulkner scholarship a hoax?

The controversy-filled world of shipping pallets.

The disturbing double life of a popular English teacher.

The Chinese team heads to the home of elite running.

An investigation into “Little Albert,” the famous test subject.

The survivors of a mass shooting, 20 years later.

The story of a new pancreas.

A profile of a doctor fighting Ebola in Uganda.

The future (and past) of non-lethal weaponry deployed against civilian populations.

Why a decades-long string of murders near the Mexican border has gone unsolved.

The life’s work of Cosmo editor-in-chief Helen Gurley Brown.

The history of Kraft Dinner, Canada’s “de facto national dish.”

A profile of the oft-shirtless tight end Rob Gronkowski.

The story of Edward Deeds, a state mental hospital patient and artistic genius.

The debate over autonomous lethal drones.

The environmental impact of server farms.

Life inside Long Island’s largest cluster of sex offenders.

On the origins of outbreaks.

Profiles of people with genius-level IQs.

The challenges of parenting genius.

“Biafra lost its freedom, of course, and I was in the middle of it as all its fronts were collapsing. I flew in from Gabon on the night of January 3, with bags of corn, beans, and powdered milk, aboard a blacked out DC6 chartered by Caritas, the Roman Catholic relief organization. I flew out six nights later on an empty DC4 chartered by the French Red Cross. It was the last plane to leave Biafra that was not fired upon.”