How Facebook ‘likes’ landed Jelani Henry in Rikers.

Finding the thread of depression in the personal history of a friend’s suicide.

[Part 1 of 2] The story behind this spring’s spate of retributive murders in Southwest D.C.

On the utter brutality of life in the tent cities, one year after the earthquake.

America’s poet laureate of the dick joke is taking it all in stride.

While fleeing their Mali stronghold, al-Qaida left behind documents describing not how to terrorize a population, but how to govern.

A primer on competitive eating’s premier event, the Hot Dog Eating Contest, which airs today at noon EST:

1: During the allotted period of time, contestants eat as many hot dogs and buns (called "HDBs") as they can. 2: They're allowed to use a beverage of their choice to wash things down. 3: They must stay in full view of their own, personal "Bunnette" scorekeeper. 4: Condiments may be used, but are not required. 5: HDBs that are still in the mouth at the end of the contest only count if they are eventually swallowed. 6: Puking up the hot dogs before the end of the contest (called "a reversal") will result in a disqualification, unless you do something horrific to make up for it (more on this later.)

The apparatus of counterinsurgency and occupation has funneled billions of dollars into Afghanistan, and much of it has ended up in the hands of insurgents. For those who have profited—be it through aid, extortion, corruption or legitimate business—there is very little incentive to bring the conflict to an end.

They listened to the radio until there was nothing more to do. Philip went into the house and retrieved a container of Kraft vanilla pudding, which he’d mixed with all the drugs he could find in the house—Valium, Klonopin, Percocet, and so on. He opened the passenger-­side door and knelt beside Becky. He held a spoon, and she guided it to her mouth. When Becky had eaten all the pudding, he got back into the driver’s seat and swallowed a handful of pills. Philip asked her how the pudding tasted. “Like freedom,” she said. As they lost consciousness, the winter chill seeped into their clothes and skin.

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

Women who left their careers to be stay-at-home mothers reflect on the decision ten years later.

What did soccer have to do with two brutal murders after a pickup game?

An audacious plan to create a new energy source could save the planet from catastrophe. But time is running out.

On Mike Powell, a Chicago-area high school wrestling coach who hasn’t allowed a life-threatening illness to interrupt his life’s work.

What is the sickness that leads inhabitants to sleep for days?

What happened when one of San Francisco’s most notorious underworld bosses tried to go clean.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, used to be a place with kids and schools and churches and houses. Then the ground caught on fire.

A report from Camp Hope, the tent city that’s sprung up next to the Chilean mine where 33 men have been trapped since early August.

A walkout mostly failed to secure more funding for schools, but it has spawned a movement of politically engaged Okies.

Inside a sleazy FBI sting involving diet clinics, fitness models, money laundering, and a supposed plot to hire a hitman.

How the state’s “restitution program” forces poor people to work off small debts.

How the the rush to direct-selling platforms like OnlyFans could change the adult industry forever.

As mass detentions and surveillance dominate the lives of China’s Uyghurs and Kazakhs, a woman struggles to free herself.

A group of high school students try desperately to make it through an isolated and dire year.

A palliative-care doctor and triple amputee has built a new kind of hospice in San Francisco.