Watching Florida government on the state and local level is like watching two parents bring an alcoholic home after he got kicked out of rehab and deciding that the best course of action is leaving him with $5,000 in an apartment up the street from a dive bar and then going to Cancun for the week. It was on the calendar already, there wasn’t any choice, he looked very healthy at the time!

On the work of Rachel Cusk.

The ethical burdens of the ICU during Covid.

The screaming ambassador to the sidewalks of New York City.

Steidl, who is sixty-six, is known for fanatical attention to detail, for superlative craftsmanship, and for embracing the best that technology has to offer. "He is so much better than anyone,” William Eggleston, the American color photographer, told me, when I met him recently in New York. Steidl has published Eggleston for a decade; two years ago, he produced an expanded, ten-volume, boxed edition of “The Democratic Forest,” the artist’s monumental 1989 work. Eggleston passed his hand through the air, in a stroking gesture. “Feel the pages of the books,” he said. “The ink is in relief. It is that thick.”

An interview with an ex-CIA agent who is a world expert on the history of car bombing.

The audacity of Bill Cosby’s black conservatism.

A profile of the polarizing New Yorker columnist.

Why did Casper sue a mattress blogger?

Michael Phelps returns to his Olympic training after a 45-day stint at The Meadows.

In 1990, Judith Butler published a groundbreaking book on queer theory. Today, “in a broad-stroke, vastly simplified version, the understanding of gender that Gender Trouble suggests is not only recognizable; it is pop.”

The role of a writer in 2017.

Per Mertesacker walks away.

On the rise and demise of the Segway.

The debate over who’s responsible when a child kills.

The story of the Norway massacre, as told by the survivors.

On what it’s like to go viral and the moral complications of laughing along.

A profile of the Daily Show host.

People with Prader-Willi syndrome, caused by a genetic defect, always feel as though they’re starving. How can you condition them to control their appetites when temptation is everywhere?

In El Salvador, Jucuapa is home to dozens of small factories that churn out what some locals call the “wooden pajamas.”

A socially starved world might just be the best thing ever to happen to the private club empire — which is about to IPO.

The doctor and New Yorker writer on embracing the shortcomings of expertise:

The truth is that the volume and complexity of the knowledge that we need to master has grown exponentially beyond our capacity as individuals. Worse, the fear is that the knowledge has grown beyond our capacity as a society.

On the road with Johnson Zeng, who buys up the metal “Americans won’t or can’t be bothered to recycle.”

A profile of organizational psychologist Adam Grant, who argues that the key to success comes from helping others.