At the start of the coronavirus outbreak, one ill-fated cruise ship became a symbol for the panic and confusion that would soon engulf the globe. What two harrowing weeks trapped aboard the ocean liner felt like—for unsuspecting tourists, for frightened crew members, and for the captain himself.

The 20 soldiers in Second Platoon try in vain to hold down a strategic outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, “among the deadliest pieces of terrain in the world for U.S. forces.”

A profile of Rick Santorum published early in his final campaign for the U.S. Senate, a race widely considered a stepping stone to the White House before he lost.

For more than 50 years, world governments have trusted a single Swiss code-making machine company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers, and diplomats secret. It turns out that company was run by the CIA.

In the Swiss town of Meiringen, where an obsessed group of ‘pilgrims’ painstakingly recreate the death of Sherlock Holmes.

The story of the “Barefoot Bandit,” a teenage fugitive on the run.

The city of New York is suing a Long Island woman for making NYPD T-shirts. But is it really about money or controlling the brand?

Caliphate and the perils of reporting online.

Reckoning with the legacy of the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster.

A profile of Alan Adler, the guy behind the Aerobie and the beloved AeroPress.

“Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.”

Other companies tried to align themselves with the Black Lives Matter protests and failed. The Vermont creamery kept doing what it’s always done.

The prevalence of online threats against women and why the people who make them go unpunished.

On frozen dumplings, industrial freezers, and what the future could hold after China’s burgeoning refrigeration boom.

A history of the divide between computing and language, and why we “define and regiment our lives, including our social lives and our perceptions of our selves, in ways that are conducive to what a computer can ‘understand.’”

For two decades, domestic counterterrorism strategy has ignored the rising danger of far-right extremism. In the atmosphere of willful indifference, a virulent movement has grown and metastasized.

The movies of Clint Eastwood.

The future of homo sapiens.

On the tortured afterlives of cast members.

A history of the war between Amazon and the book industry.

Investigating the origins of the ice cream truck sensation.

The empty promises and empty buildings of Foxconn’s Wisconsin debacle.

A history of scandal and civil war within the first family of the Unification Church.

On the rise of Indian Posse, the largest of Canada’s native gangs, and the fall of its leader.

The rise and fall of Mickey the Pope, the founder of a New York City marijuana delivery business.