On Sam Cooke, theme parties, and the importance of McDonald’s-related jingles when street performing.

The bizarre tale–and unlikely turnaround–of an NHL player who tried to have his youth coach murdered.

The life and death of a reporter.

An open letter on Grand Theft Auto 5 and aging out of the Rockstar Games franchise.

On simplicity, self-reliance and refusing to cooperate with “the apparatus of secrecy” that surrounds online surveillance.

Two floors of a building in prime Brooklyn for $1000 a month seemed too good to be true. It was.

Balancing the creation of a house with living in it as a home.

What former NBA coach Monty Williams learned in the wake of losing his wife.

As a father succumbs to lung cancer, his son tries to recreate his personality in the form of a chatbot.

How a fight to stop a potentially toxic Costco chicken plant in Nebraska made common cause of small-town environmentalists and anti-Muslim xenophobes.

A feat of elegant design wowed elite architects and promised to bring education to poor children in Nigeria. Then it collapsed.

In South Carolina, civil forfeiture targets black people’s money most of all, exclusive investigative data shows.

How a bunch of Canadian hipsters wound up smuggling cocaine (and getting caught).

The difficult final year of a much-loved and legendarily difficult woman.

What could the political effects be of a media that actually served working-class Americans?

A pilot program in Mississippi offers a glimpse of the possibilities.

A profile of the actor, who died yesterday at age 43.

An interview with the creator and star of “I May Destroy You.”

Forget about the ticks. A pattern of harm follows “Lyme-literate medical doctors.”

Private executioners paid in cash. Middle-of-the-night killings. False or incomplete justifications.

Inside the race to eliminate one of nature’s biggest threats.

A profile of Uruguay President José Mujica, a former revolutionary who’s been shot six times, was imprisoned for 14 years and, since taking office, has shunned the presidential mansion in favor of a small farm while legalizing gay marriage, abortion and marijuana.

He was arrested for pushing his three grandsons so hard on a Grand Canyon hike that rangers feared for their lives. Their account of the summer they spent with their youthful grandpa would include an uncanny understanding of marijuana strains and a stopover in Jamaica.

A profile of Kanye West written in the style of an all-access magazine piece - using only quotes and statements that Kanye West has made on Twitter and other web outlets.

When Zulhumar Isaac’s parents disappeared amid a wave of detentions of ethnic minorities, she had to play a perilous game with the state to get them back.