On how search and advertising became indistinguishable, the finer points of not being evil, and why privacy is by nature immeasurable. How Google made us the product:

“Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics,” wrote Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired. “It didn’t pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising—it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right.”

On the production team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, who defined the’90s at the box office with films like Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop, then struggled amidst Simpson’s hedonistic excess and the failure of Days of Thunder.

Mikhail Kalashnikov’s brainchild, Avtomat Kalashnikovais aka the AK-47, is the most stockpiled firearm in the world and has altered the last century like no other product. C.J. Chivers, author of The Gun, discusses.

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.”

Punitive notions of disease have a long history, and such notions are particularly active with cancer. There is the “fight” or “crusade” against cancer; cancer is the “killer” disease; people who have cancer are “cancer victims.” Ostensibly, the illness is the culprit. But it is also the cancer patient who is made culpable.

Two men, separated by more than 150 years, discover the folly of attempting Western-style capitalism in Micronesia.

An essay on life as “the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet.”

A former Eagle Scout attends the National Boy Scout Jamboree, aka Jambo, held at a brand-new, $100 million scouting wonderland called The Summit.

The gangs of Brooklyn’s Brownsville, an area with the higest concentration of public housing in America.

The Drugstore Cowboy star candidly discusses the characters who defined her career.

The backstory of “The Duke in His Domain,” Truman Capote’s 1957 New Yorker profile of Marlon Brando.

In 1968, the author revisits remote British Columbia, which he traveled two years earlier.

On the actors who unwittingly starred in The Innocence of Muslims.

Conspiracy theories, utopian fantasies, and cult involvement surrounding the international standard of musical tuning.

How Georgia halted its drug epidemic, but not its addicts–and what the U.S. might learn from their efforts.

Reporting on drug-resistant tuberculosis across Papua New Guinea – and then contracting the disease.

On the foreign workers of Dubai, who now make up 90 percent of the city’s population.

Stuck between the Taliban and the U.S. Military, Afghanistan’s farmers risk their lives both when they grow, and when they refuse to grow, fields of poppies.

One part rapist, one part con-man; the story of the seemingly unconvictable Hy Doan.

The story of dog-scent lineup innovator Keith Pikett and the not-so-scientific science behind forensics.

The author gets a security guard job at this aging textile factory. Part of the City by City project.

Five prostitutes disappear. Bodies turn up on a Long Island beach. On the women lost, and the families left behind.

An interview with the former president about the upcoming election and American consensus.

On the Balkan musical genre Turbo-Folk, its ties to Serbian ultranationalism, and the strongman nightclub owner who brought it to Croatia.