“As a middle-aged queer, I could not break cover. And, as a middle-aged black man, I was embarrassed that these white boys from this melodrama mattered to me anyway.”

An oral history with former employees Sasha Frere-Jones, Alysia Abbott, Piotr Orlov, and Chris Wilcha.

Thirty-year-old payment processing CEO Dan Price made an audacious decision and was rewarded with viral stardom. But what were his real motivations?

Cancer surgery for $700, a heart bypass for $2,000. Pretty good, but under India’s new health-care system, it’s not good enough.

Last year an antique Depression-era neon sign was excavated in Pasadena—but it dug up a troubling story along with it. On Nat King Cole, hot chicken, and Malibu’s racist past.

When word spreads about a 17-year-old in rural Tuscany reputed to have clairvoyant powers, she must withstand followers seeking her wisdom and officials hellbent on tearing her down.

Activities include: getting his own stem cells injected into his body every six months, taking 100 supplements a day, following a strict diet, bathing in infrared light, hanging out in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and wearing yellow-lensed glasses every time he gets on an airplane.

“We’re trying really hard to make things better,” said one former Apple executive. “But most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from.”

Previously: “Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class”

Elias Pompa is the lone deputy in one of the poorest counties in Texas. He is also at the center of the U.S. border crisis.

Punitive notions of disease have a long history, and such notions are particularly active with cancer. There is the “fight” or “crusade” against cancer; cancer is the “killer” disease; people who have cancer are “cancer victims.” Ostensibly, the illness is the culprit. But it is also the cancer patient who is made culpable.

Samaria Rice is the mother of Tamir, not a “mother of the movement.”

Most of the country is trying to keep guns out of schools. A town in rural Idaho is taking the opposite approach.

The reckonings of one of the South’s white suburban women, whose loyalty is key to whether Trump is reelected.

The Washington University philosophy professor devotes 4,697 words to the importance of using one’s education to better communicate with loved ones:

I want to talk to you about talking, that commonest of all our intended activities, for talking is our public link with one another; it is a need; it is an art; it is the chief instrument of all instruction; it is the most personal aspect of our private life. To those who have sponsored our appearance in the world, the first memorable moment to follow our inaugural bawl is the birth of our first word. It is that noise, a sound that is no longer a simple signal, like the greedy squalling of a gull, but a declaration of the incipient presence of mind, that delivers us into the human realm.

A generation of African American heroin users is dying in the opioid epidemic nobody talks about. The nation’s capital is ground zero.

One of Europe’s poorest countries wanted a road, so U.S. mega-contractor Bechtel sold it a $1.3 billion highway, with the backing of a powerful American ambassador. Funny thing is, the highway is barely being used—and the ambassador is now working for Bechtel.

The Mouth of the South is leading a relatively quiet life.

“Violence, being instrumental by nature, is rational to the extent that it is effective in reaching the end which must justify it.”

Alberto Salazar is one of the most celebrated running coaches in the world. Is he also a cheater?

New research is intensifying the debate — with profound implications for the future of the planet.

Why had the U.S. once again targeted Gaddafi? Of all the evils and perils in the world, there is none that galls Reagan more than terrorism. Of all the anti-American thugs who hang out in the back alleys of the Third World, there is none Reagan despises more than Gaddafi.