“Meir Kay is a bar mitzvah party motivator.”

Who gets to decide when a destination is “at capacity”?

Inside Harun Yahya, which promotes a “sexed-up Disney version of Islam,” publishes a 800-page creationist atlas, runs a surreal TV station, and has films it members in orgies that often include high-ranking politicians.

Stranded in Yemen’s war zone, a decaying supertanker has more than a million barrels of oil aboard. If—or when—it explodes or sinks, thousands may die.

They travel America in vans and RVs stopping at Targets and Wal-Marts in search of rare soap and coveted toys to stock Amazon’s fulfillment warehouses.

“A body is a body, but personal effects are a life.”

A profile of singer-songwriter Will Oldham.

He has settled into character as an uncanny troubadour, singing a sort of transfigured country music, and he has become, in his own subterranean way, a canonical figure. Johnny Cash covered him, Björk has championed him (she invited him to appear on the soundtrack of “Drawing Restraint 9”), and Madonna, he suspects, has quoted him (her song “Let It Will Be” seems to borrow from his “O Let It Be,” though he says, “I’m fully prepared to accept that it’s a coincidence”).

How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.

Hollywood is aggressively adapting material that doesn’t have a narrative or even any characters. But not all intellectual property is created equal.

Irving Kahn is about to celebrate his 106th birthday. He still goes to work every day. Scientists are studying him and several hundred other Ashkenazim to find out what keeps them going. And going. And going.

A man in Puerto Rico stumbles on a brick of cocaine, and rather than sell it he decides to bury it. Others, hearing his story, cook up a plan to retrieve it.

Emily Weiss has reinvented herself from reality TV villain to patron saint of dewy skin, no-makeup makeup, and no-commerce commerce. Why young women — and investors — are buying in.

Westerners’ spiritual quests in India gone wrong.

Following a storm that took 72 lives in Alabama.

A man’s search for his kidnapped children in India and Nepal.

A sociologist embeds with a gang in Chicago.

A hunt for maple poachers in Western Washington.

Tackling North America’s longest continuous off-road race in an ’80s VW Bug.

What it’s like to be too big in America.

Wayne Simmons was ideal conservative commentator. A former C.I.A. operative, he ate lunch with Donald Rumsfeld, took trips to Guantánamo aboard Air Force Two, and pumped the party line on Fox News. There was only one problem: Simmons had never been in the C.I.A.

The son of a Red Sox legend, his trail of violent attacks runs back to his teen years. So does the line of judges who somehow saw fit, time and again, to give him one more chance. Now he’s on trial for murder.

Jackie Thomas was $29,134 in debt and in trouble with state regulators. She hadn’t slept in days. If a judge ruled against her, she’d fail the mothers who could only keep their jobs thanks to the 24-hour child care she offered.

W.H. Auden’s quiet, personal pursuit of kindness and honor.