Death on America’s racetracks:

At 2:11 p.m., as two ambulances waited with motors running, 10 horses burst from the starting gate at Ruidoso Downs Race Track 6,900 feet up in New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains.

Nineteen seconds later, under a brilliant blue sky, a national champion jockey named Jacky Martin lay sprawled in the furrowed dirt just past the finish line, paralyzed, his neck broken in three places. On the ground next to him, his frightened horse, leg broken and chest heaving, was minutes away from being euthanized on the track. For finishing fourth on this early September day last year, Jacky Martin got about $60 and possibly a lifetime tethered to a respirator.

During my first weeks in Rogers Park, I was surprised by how often I heard the word “pioneer”. I heard it first from the white owner of an antiques shop with signs in the windows that read: “Warning, you are being watched and recorded.” When I stopped off in his shop, he welcomed me to the neighbourhood warmly and delivered an introductory speech dense with code. This neighbourhood, he told me, needs “more people like you”. He and other “people like us” were gradually “lifting it up”.

Excerpted from Notes From No Man’s Land

The first known infiltration of the finance fraternity Kappa Beta Phi.

Excerpted from Young Money.

A local reporter set out to profile the celebrated writer. He ended up lampooned in The New Yorker.

Excerpted from Updike.

The activists fighting for police reform in the wake of a video that showed a black teenager shot 16 times by a white cop.

The author takes a trip to HempCon with her anxious, insomniac, ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother.

Unraveling the case of a Canadian man suffering from schizophrenia, put on trial for murder in New York, but found not criminally responsible in Nova Scotia.

How a pair of HGTV stars are trying to renovate the reputation of Waco, Texas.

An artist at the end of his life.

No one understands our new era of reality-TV populism better than the man who turned “The Real Housewives” into an empire.

Abdullahi Yusuf was 18 and ready to dedicate his life to ISIS when federal agents pulled him aside in the Minneapolis airport. He will never see the inside of a jail cell.

The story of Christopher Knight, who lived in the Maine woods for 27 years with virtually no human contact.

On Silicon Valley's newfound interest in the weed business.

Previously: Mat Honan on the Longform Podcast.

A profile of the Rookie editor-in-chief, who makes her Broadway debut next week.

While war raged across Afghanistan, expats lived in a bubble of good times and easy money. But as the U.S. withdraws, life has taken a deadly turn.

Tony Ma will bet you as much as $600,000 to train your student for college acceptance. If the student gets into their top choice school, Ma takes the cash. Rejected? He gets nothing.

On Dec. 18, 2007, the school board in Pinellas Country, Florida, voted to abandon integration. They justified the decision with bold promises: Schools in poor, black neighborhoods would get more money, more staff, more resources. They delivered none of that. A 5-part investigation.

The idea was to shoot a Neiman Marcus fur catalog in the Andes mountains, not get stranded on them.

The ripple effect of a single MTA mechanical failure.

The post-newsroom lives of veteran newspaper reporters who have lost their jobs.

Memories of the author’s teenage years, when his father pulled up stakes on a comfortable life in Baltimore to reinvent himself as the head of a S&L bank in Los Angeles.

On Chuck Lorre, creator of the #1 (Two and a Half Men) and #2 comedy on American television, former cruise ship guitarist, composer of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song, and recently antagonist of Charlie Sheen.

In eight malls spread across three continents, kids get to try out grown-up jobs in corporate-sponsored theme parks. Welcome to KidZania—coming soon to the U.S.

The author came late to basketball. A profile of his favorite player:

He creates a sense of danger in the arena and yet has enough wit in his style to bring off funny ideas when he wants to.