It’s been a rough year.

Hanging out with one of America’s most hated pundits.

On a 16-year-old with a debilitating disorder: trichtillomania.

On Ryan Coogler’s film.

Paranoia and hypocrisy in America’s heartland.

One woman’s beautiful, strange, and troubling final days.

A year at a “low-performing” high school in San Francisco.

Making vision boards with rap’s strangest fallen star.

An essay on televangelists and a missing mother.

And I fear what it has become.

A profile of Gil-Scott Heron.

How USAID workers are trained for work and danger in Afghanistan.

What sex workers think about legalizing sex work.

Life in America without dental care.

Trying to make sense of a fragmented, disparate musical tradition.

Then there’s Mark Kostabi, the former New York gossip column fixture and self-professed “con artist” who everybody remembers but nobody talks about. Christie’s and Sotheby’s have no comment. Neither does the MoMA, the Guggenheim, or the Met, despite the curious fact that they all have Kostabis in their permanent collections. As for quotes from some highfalutin critics expounding on the semiotics of cone hats, cash registers, and the Sony Walkman in Kostabi’s work? Not a chance.

Why can’t the military fix its violence against women problem? Congress is on the precipice of ushering in the biggest shift in military policy since the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But would it have saved 21-year-old airman Natasha Aposhian?

A Jamaican cricket legend bowls in Brooklyn.

A profile of a promising young runner.

A profile of Ernie Adams, Bill Belichick’s mysterious right hand man.

A story of literary ambition, fabulous parties and a hidden past.

How lies become truth in online America.

A nation’s uncertain future.

Covering an election in Peru’s largest prison.

In North Georgia, two men feud over a quarter-mile property line.