One frosty October morning in 1991, a newborn baby boy is found inside a plastic bag in an Oslo graveyard. This is his story, in nine parts.

The idea that people would “inexpensively have access to a tremendous global computation and networking facility” was supposed to create wealth and wellbeing. Has it instead created a technologically advanced dystopia?

What do we give up when we become freedom-seeking, self-determining, autonomous entrepreneurs? A lot, actually.

In 2008, a Brooklyn cop grew gravely concerned about how the public was being served. So he began carrying a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors.

When New York built a prison designed to house two men in a single cell, it launched a new experiment in crime control. A look at life inside this prison and in the tiny town surrounding it.

A PR company that worked with dictators and oligarchs deliberately inflamed racial tensions in South Africa—and destroyed itself in the process.

Representative Matt Shea has been trying to create a libertarian utopia in the Pacific Northwest, a 51st state called Liberty. And he keeps getting re-elected.

When Nikki Addimando shot her abusive partner, she thought she had enough proof it was self-defense. Why did the prosecution only see a cold-blooded killer?

How a controversial rationalist blogger became a mascot and martyr in a struggle against the New York Times.

An investigation into the deadly use of Tasers by police.

Scenes from a class conflict playing out between millionaires and billionaires on Hawaii’s Big Island.

“There was no they.' There was not even a 'he,' no armed person turning on a crowd. But what happened at JFK last night was, in every respect but the violence, a mass shooting.”

When an exclusive private school discovered a teacher was sleeping with his 17-year old student, administrators did their best to make the problem vanish.

Lenny makes $5,000 a week selling coke. It was easy to get into the business after finishing prep school. Getting out and going legit after his final score is proving much more difficult.

In an Oklahoma City neighborhood usually left off city maps, the federal government is implementing its $300 million anti-poverty plan: teaching poor Americans how to get married.

A son on his father's career behind the bar.

Excerpted from Two and Two.

We now know that most mass extinctions in Earth’s history were caused by the same thing. What we don’t know is when it will happen next.

I know dudes like me aren’t supposed to talk about depression, but I’ll talk about it. If a real motherfucker like me can struggle with it, then anybody can struggle with it.

How Niki Nakayama’s kaiseki restaurant became a highly coveted reservation in L.A.

How Adam Neumann turned WeWork into a $47 billion business.

Shaun MacDonald was an ambitious tech innovator whose start-up was going to revolutionize the crypto economy. His wealthy investors had no idea that their charismatic founder was really Boaz Manor, a notorious Canadian white-collar criminal.

While the virus has ravaged rich nations, reported death rates in poorer ones remain relatively low. What probing this epidemiological mystery can tell us about global health.

Jeffrey Fang was a ride-hailing legend, a top earner with relentless hustle. Then his minivan was carjacked—with his kids in the back seat.

A talk from the re:publica conference in Berlin:

The good part about naming a talk in 2017 ‘Notes from an Emergency’ is that there are so many directions to take it. The emergency I want to talk about is the rise of a vigorous ethnic nationalism in Europe and America. This nationalism makes skillful use of online tools, tools that we believed inherently promoted freedom, to advance an authoritarian agenda.