Creating, and then attempting to dismantle, a fake persona based on a man who died in 1984.

People have been having fun with nitrous oxide—often in the name of science—since its discovery more than 240 years ago.

It isn’t easy to find out the truth about the benefits of male circumcision.

In Guyana after the Jonestown massacre, with the survivors and the dead.

The rise and fall of the Internet mogul.

The story of Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who walked off his base in Afghanistan only to be captured by the Taliban.

The frenzied few days before the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer.

A survey of sex on a Saturday night in New York City.

A profile of “not just the toughest but the most corrupt and abusive sheriff in America.”

The importance of the sports metaphor in the American consciousness and why Lewis Lapham didn’t join the C.I.A.

How PCC, once an inmate soccer team and now Brazil’s most notorious prison gang, coordinated seven days of riots throughout São Paulo using mobile phones.

A profile of video game artist Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Super Mario Bros.

It’s now routine for corporations to outsource the task of generating new ideas. A look at the consulting firms who meet that need.

A remembrance of relationships formed when the author, at 13 and using a false identity, frequented hockey chat rooms.

The pecking order of All-Star Weekend sex-with-basketball-player-or-rapper hopefuls.

How the director of Midnight Special thinks strategically about his art and his career.

Over a million people are buried in a potter’s field on Hart Island. Here are some of their stories.

Jacqueline Kennedy, William Manchester, and the battle over the authorized account of J.F.K.’s assassination.

On the downfall of Deutsche Bank.

The little-understood history of the whales and how barnacles may be the key to understanding how giant mammals evolved underwater.

An excerpt from the best-selling true crime book of all time.

Although she is one of the richest writers in the country, her finances are a mess.

Alberto Nisman accused Iran and Argentina of colluding to bury a terrorist attack. Did it get him killed?

It was the failed dream of the heir to the Frank-o-Matic sausage-link machinery fortune.