“This is a story about an entertainer named R. Kelly. It is a story about the remarkable, but also very strange, pop talent he has. It is a story about the difficult places he came from and the ways they may, or may not, have shaped who he has become. It is also the story of a man who has been publicly accused of multiple sexual offenses with underage women, and who stood trial for making child pornography. He was eventually acquitted of that charge, and his career has continued uninterrupted, but for the most part he has evaded even the most basic questions that might help people understand what is true about him. For this story, R. Kelly agreed to speak about his whole life without restrictions.”

How the website mastered “Social Publishing”:

To understand some of the principles underlying BuzzFeed’s strategy, he recommends reading The Individual in a Social World, a 1977 book by Stanley Milgram, who is known, among other things, for his experiments leading to the six degrees of separation theory. “When some cute kitten video goes viral,” says [Jonah] Peretti, “you know a Stanley Milgram experiment is happening thousands of times a day.”

“A story is a kind of biopsy of human life.”

Is Bryan Saunders a drug-inspired outsider genius, or just in need of intervention?

Robert Berman was a passionate and polarizing English teacher at the Horace Mann School. He is also accused of sexually abusing many of his devoted students.

The underground economy of child sex trafficking, and what happens after someone is rescued from it.

“Everyone on the boat is racist and nice. Including me.”

How good is Julian Newman, really?

What is the sickness that leads inhabitants to sleep for days?

What it means when an investigative reporter’s undercover work is framed as a personal journey.

A profile of the goat-herding nationalist intellectual who is leading a movement.

A dispatch from Cape Town, where surprising things can happen when it feels like the world is about to end.

Is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions existential threat, a last resort, or both?

A report from Antartica, where the ecosystem is changing so fast scientists have no idea what will come next.

The first epicenter is coming back to life, but not as anyone knew it.

Leo Rodgers is the irrepressible gravel-racing hero we all need now.

How a landscape architect is enlisting nature to defend our coastal cities against climate change—and doing it on the cheap.

Drought is shrinking one of the country’s largest reservoirs, revealing a hidden Eden.

Life inside Za’atari, a camp for Syrian refugees just across the Jordanian border, where “the dispossession is absolute. Everyone has lost his country, his home, his equilibrium. Most have lost a family member or a friend. What is left is a kind of theatrical pride, the necessary performance of will.”

A profile of the novelist, who is surprised to be alive.

Buddy Cianci, former Providence mayor and convicted felon, is running for the city’s top office. Again.

How a Madrid workshop is perfecting the art of copying imperiled art, from Egyptian tombs to Renaissance paintings.

How A+E’s CEO is navigating the new TV environment with hit shows like “Duck Dynasty.”

The poet died when he was hit by a car in 1965. Everything else about his demise is a mystery.

How the new store is—and isn’t—changing Detroit.