Just days after suffering a concussion, a 17-year-old fullback hangs himself. Inside his family’s journey to learn if a brain injury is to blame.

At Nancy Reagan’s memorial, Hillary Clinton praised her fellow former first lady for “starting a national conversation” about AIDS. That is not how everyone remembers it.

The private grief of Samaria Rice, twenty months after her son Tamir was killed.

In 1983, I wrote an article about sex and disabled people. In interviewing sexually active men and women, I felt removed, as though I were an anthropologist interviewing headhunters while endeavoring to maintain the value-neutral stance of a social scientist. Being disabled myself, but also being a virgin, I envied these people ferociously

“Jeffrey Levitt stole and misappropriated a grand total of fourteen million, six hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred forty-seven dollars and fifty-eight cents. He stole all that. It was the largest single white-collar crime in Maryland history, almost bringing down the state’s entire savings and loan industry.” And it still wasn’t enough.

Being off the grid suits Kurt Vile just fine. Sitting on the wraparound porch in jeans and a green T-shirt he got at the Ramones Museum in Berlin, unruly curls falling well below his shoulders, the 38-year-old Philadelphia singer-guitarist squirts several drops of a tincture labeled “Calm Mind” into a plastic water bottle and gives it a thorough swish. “Ayurvedic herbs,” he explains after gulping down his concoction. “It’s like nature’s Xanax.” He doesn’t sound entirely convinced.

To understand why a 64-year-old man would try and break the land speed record by traveling hundreds of miles per hour, you need to know a little something about his family.

A dispatch from Donetsk.

In Goiânia, a city of 1.3 million in Brazil’s agricultural heartland, one in twenty homeless residents have been murdered in the last two years.

A profile of Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Published originally in GQ Russia.

The controversial history of WI-38, a cell strain created from an aborted fetus “that has arguably helped to save more lives than any other created by researchers.”

A small-town coffeeshop owner led a double life as a blogger and podcaster on the topic of “pickup artistry.” Then his identity, and his intimate writings about his experiences with 46 local women, was made public.

“After college, as my friends left Michigan for better opportunities, I was determined to help fix this broken, chaotic city by building my own home in the middle of it. I was 23 years old.”

With up to four million World War II soldiers considered missing in action on the Eastern front, a group of Russian volunteers vows to unearth, identify and properly bury their remains.

A former prostitute and pregnant at 14, Lillie was a foster child looking for a home. A nurse and already a mother of 5, Amy wanted to help. Then Lillie and her newborn moved in.

A visit to Tokyo’s first co-sleeping cafe, where one can pay a set fee to sleep next to a woman in 20 minute increments, though spooning, being patted on the head, and a change of pajamas are extra.

Thirteen years ago, Chris Velten disappeared while retracing the travels of explorer Mungo Park in Africa. He hadn’t been heard from at all — until he sent a friend request.

On creativity in the age of Trump.

Far too many county jail inmates are dying from suicide, a cause of death critics say can be prevented with reasonable health care services. The problem? Private correctional health care firms may have a goal other than providing adequate care.

The surreal existence of an AOL content writer:

I was given eight to ten article assignments a night, writing about television shows that I had never seen before. AOL would send me short video clips, ranging from one-to-two minutes in length — clips from “Law & Order,” “Family Guy,” “Dancing With the Stars,” the Grammys, and so on and so forth… My job was then to write about them. But really, my job was to lie.

A profile of the writer.

Plus: An excerpt from McCann's new novel, TransAtlantic. (via Longform Fiction)

How a high-stakes poker game that started at Tobey Maguire’s house became part of a $100 million gambling and money-laundering operation orchestrated by the Russian mob.

Welcome to Wakaliwood, where a resourceful producer in the slums of Kampala makes action movies like Who Killed Captain Alex? Uganda’s First Action Movie for about $200 apiece.

A profile of California congressman Darrell Issa:

A few days after we met in Las Vegas, Issa called me. He was concerned about all my questions regarding his early life and didn’t see why they were newsworthy. The conversation was awkward.