The history of Kraft Dinner, Canada’s “de facto national dish.”

The debate over autonomous lethal drones.

The life and work of Nelson Algren.

How Republicans came to be the party of white people.

The economics of freelance journalism in 2013.

The drunken genius of Harry Nilsson, the American Beatle.

The capitalist evangelism of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In feminist manifesto.

The demise of an NFL player.

The rise and fall of “Rock Around the Clock” singer Bill Haley.

The story of the Abbottabad raid, in detail.

On the moral failure of über-wealthy do-gooders.

The 1900 death of Fritz and the battle to define his legacy.

Growing up Afghan in the era of the Afghanistan War.

The technological future of the struggling porn industry.

The flawed science that helped convict a Tennessee man of murder.

The role of black dolls in American culture.

The fake cops of Santa Monica.

The outsized legacy of the emo rapper who always said he would die young.

The story of pianist Bill Evans and his lifelong obsession with a single song.

A profile of the billionaire influencer.

The story of ‘Kai the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker.’

On the photographer Catherine Opie who has “made a study of the freeways of Los Angeles, lesbian families, surfers, Tea Party gatherings, America’s national parks, the houses of Beverly Hills, teen-age football players, the personal effects of Elizabeth Taylor, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, Boy Scouts, her friends, mini-malls, and tree stumps.”

On the nature of violence.

When my brother was twelve, I found six mice nailed to the wall of the abandoned tree house in the woods near our apartment. He spent a lot of time there. It seemed to me the little mouse faces were frozen in agony. As though they’d been alive when he’d hammered the nails through them.

On the start of the high school football season in Odessa, Texas. An adaptation published alongside the release of Bissinger’s 1990 book of the same name, which led to the movie and the show.