Noah Lennox—better known as Panda Bear—has lived in Lisbon for a decade. How has the Portuguese capital shaped his life and work?

A 58-year-old diabetic and his team of amateur rugby players attempt to qualify for the 1984 Summer Olympics in rowing.

The N.S.A. claims it needs access to all our phone records. But is that the best way to catch a terrorist?

A profile of the best-selling author, self-help guru and convicted felon.

Living with hypersomnia, a disorder marked by sleeping dozens of hours straight and still never feeling truly awake.

With a little South American reinterpretation, Confederate imagery becomes harmless kitsch. Or does it?

Lester Cotton’s transformation from reluctant football player to top Alabama recruit, and the hopes and dreams of a neighborhood that ride on his shoulders.

The history of a powerful and violent secret society in the islands of southern Chile.

Miriam Carey died at the hands of the Secret Service. Over a year later, her family has no real answers about what happened to her.

The Scandinavians had an idea that seems wacky to Americans: make a prison safe and livable.

Coastal erosion is leading more than a few Britons to watch their homes crumble into the sea.

Maybe Clinton isn’t a “good candidate,” as political junkies like to say. But that might not matter in 2016.

Before The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen was just another literary novelist with a new book coming out.

John Barrymore once had a totem pole on his Beverly Hills estate. But where did it come from?

A visit with Ai Weiwei, Laura Poitras, and Jacob Appelbaum, three people who live in justifiable paranoia of government surveillance.

What happens when a successfully funded Kickstarter product fails to launch?

On the Final Exit Network, a controversial right-to-die organization, and the death of their client John Celmer.

In the fantasy and superhero realm, the most chilling and compelling villain of the year was surely Magneto, who in X-Men: First Class is more of a proto-villain, a victim of human cruelty with a grudge against the nonmutants of the world rooted in bitter and inarguable experience. Magneto is all the more fascinating by virtue of being played by Michael Fassbender, the hawkishly handsome Irish-German actor whose on-screen identity crises dominated no fewer than four movies in 2011. Magneto, more than the others, also evokes a curious kind of self-reproach, because his well-founded vendetta is, after all, directed against us.

After decades of failed revitalization strategies, a town of 10,000 tries another.

How an increase in the earth’s temperature could wipe out a continent.

A report from the oil boom in North Dakota, where unemployment is 3.4 percent and McDonald’s gives out $300 signing bonuses.

Inside the lives of Sri Lanka’s Tamils as they emerge from a multi-decade war that defined and nearly destroyed them.

A story of endurance in the face of unimaginably brutal conditions.

The night when Terry Thompson let his zoo-worthy collection of big animals, including lions and a bear, into the wilds of Zanesville, Ohio before shooting himself in the head.