The case for paying college athletes.

What does satire do? What should we expect of it? Is it crucial to Western culture that we be free to produce it?

She calls claiming to be Amy Pascal, Kathleen Kennedy, or some other powerful woman in entertainment. She knows personal details about her mark as well as the woman she is impersonating.

She offers work, then sends them—photographers, make-up artists, soldiers—around the world to bilk them out of modest amounts of cash.

Throughout 2015 and 2016, amid a series of conversations I had socially with gay and bisexual men about chemsex, new, darker elements to this scene began to emerge; details from unconnected participants that mirrored each other – the same incidents, the same crimes, sometimes even the same culprits. Together they formed a picture: that beneath the surface reports about chemsex – the endless hedonism, the irresistibly intense sex – there is a much blacker sea, unmapped.

On the mysterious life story of blues icon Blind Willie Johnson and a half-century of attempts to fill in the blanks.

The revival of a landmark 1921 musical opens a door on the deep and twisted roots of black performance in America.

On the difficulty of diagnosing chronic lyme disease and the persistent struggle to do no harm.

A discussion of the “limited but important” power of Occupy Wall Street’s open blog, “We Are the 99%.”

The $200 billion industry behind the Snuggie.

On 30 years of Long Island politics.

Was one of Detroit’s most notorious criminals also one of the FBI’s most valuable informants?

Jerold Haas was on the brink of blockchain riches. Then his body was found in the woods of southern Ohio.

One man’s choice to stand alone. The story of race, politics, and power in baseball.

In 1992, a Chinese freighter tipped violently in a storm dumping a load of plastic floatee toys—7,200 red beavers, 7,200 green frogs, 7,200 blue turtles, and 7,200 yellow ducks—to the open sea. This is their story.

It’s tempting to think Marco McMillian was killed because of his race, his sexuality, or because he was running for mayor. The truth is more elusive.

What adolescence does to adolescents is nowhere near as brutal as what it does to their parents.

An excerpt from All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood.

“That learning to cook could lead an American woman to success of any kind would have seemed utterly implausible in 1949; that it is so thoroughly plausible 60 years later owes everything to Julia Child’s legacy.”

The social network positioned its plan to bring the internet to millions of Indians as a gift. The country saw a catch.

The story of a rivalry gone awry.

After the massive success of SimCity, the company behind the game began building private simulations for corporations.

“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”

Baltimore-area renters complain about a property owner they say is neglectful and litigious. Few know their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.

How HGTV changed a city.

Las Vegas is both stranger and more normal than you might imagine, and for some reason, people don’t think anyone lives there.

Memories of “Hollywood’s most grinding bore,” Ronald Reagan.