How the Chilean miners survived.

The limited vision of the news gurus.

The story of the Grenfell Tower fire.

On the ground in Wilmington.

On the confines of masculinity.

On the friendship that made Google huge.

On the lost-children stories of Australia.

On July 11, 2002, the researchers revealed that they had synthesized the polio virus, which had been wiped out in the US in 1979. It was the first time a virus had been created from scratch with synthetic DNA. The work was funded by the Pentagon in part to establish whether terrorists could pull off such a feat. The answer was yes.

The story of the loneliest whale in the world.

In 1966, Anton LaVey introduced the world to the Church of Satan. The 1980s saw a “Satanic Panic” in the form of abuse charges brought against child-care workers and suburban parents. Today, the author joins a group of Satanists for afternoon tea at the church’s global headquarters in a “bland New York college town.”

Brooklyn, Illinois has one of the most dense clusters of strip clubs and rubdown parlors in the entire country, drawing patrons from nearby St. Louis and its suburbs. Inside the clubs with the dancers, a strip club scholar, the mayor, and the regulars whose dollars keep the depressed local economy afloat.

On the strengths and limitations of the Republican frontrunner:

“The Mormon’s never going to win the who-do-you-want-to-have-a-beer-with contest,” concedes one adviser, while another acknowledges, “He’s never had the experience of sitting in a bar, and like, talking.”

A profile of the man who ran Jeb Bush’s $118 million super-PAC as he cleans out his office. Had Murphy been legally allowed to talk to the candidate during the election, here’s what he would have said: “What the fuck were we thinking?”

For decades, the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has quietly hid money in offshore accounts for the world’s wealthiest people. Following the largest document leak in history, the Panama Papers, the firm’s secrets are now public.

He sawed out the bottom. Nailed the crate to the telephone pole out in front of the house. New hoop. ... I’d be out there shooting until 10 at night. That’s when I started getting really good. The pole was round so you couldn’t bank the ball in. And you weren’t getting a friendly bounce on a square rim. You had to hit it dead-on, wet.

The postscript of a viral hit.

A profile of law professor Dan Kahan, “one of the best-known unknown academics in the country,” who wants to close the communication gap between scientists and the public.

Manny Pacquiao, possibly the greatest boxer of his era and still in his fighting prime, on the campaign trail for a congressional seat in the remote, untamed Southern province of the Phillipines that spawned him.

In March of 1991, Vanilla Ice had the #1 album in the country (To the Extreme), a movie about to be released (TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze), and a dogged belief that his 15 minutes weren’t about to end.

I played a father for a 12-year-old with a single mother. The girl was bullied because she didn’t have a dad, so the mother rented me. I’ve acted as the girl’s father ever since. I am the only real father that she knows.

The author participates in the Society for Creative Anachronism’s “Crown Lyst, the twice-yearly event when knights will battle with ancient weapons and the victor will be named the new king.”

On the lives of the men who gang-raped a woman on a Delhi bus last year, the life of their victim, and the people left out of India’s growing prosperity.

Dorothy Stratten was the focus of the dreams and ambitions of three men. One killed her.

The Haqqani family, an organized crime militia dubbed the “Sopranos of the Afghanistan war,” will almost surely outlast the U.S. occupation and thus seize tremendous power after the U.S. exits.