“Last August, I found myself wrung out and miserable over the state of the United States—the vitriol of the presidential election, the deep chasms of reality where we all seemed to find ourselves. I wanted to get the hell away, but not just away. I wanted out. I wanted nothing that resembled where I was coming from. I wanted everything new.”

“A unicorn, a monster, a phoenix, a machine, a heavyweight fighter, an astronaut, a superhero, a thoroughbred, a home-run hitter, a waitress juggling ‘16 entrees, 42 starters, 16 desserts,’ a jazz virtuoso, LeBron James, Magellan, Snuffleupagus. The actress Laurie Metcalf has been compared to all of these things.”

On the service’s multiple origin stories.

A son, the illusion of his dead father and where technology intersects with real life.

“Love purifies. Suffering never purified anybody; suffering merely intensifies the self-directed drives within us. Any act of love, however--no matter how small--lessens anxiety's grip, gives us a taste of tomorrow, and eases the yoke of our fears. Love, unlike virtue, is not its own reward. The reward of love is peace of mind, and peace of mind is the end of man's desiring.”

The author's first published article.

“Women are not abstaining from or delaying marriage to prove a point about equality. They are doing it because they have internalized assumptions that just a half-century ago would have seemed radical.”

Excerpted from </em>All the Single Ladies</a>.

"I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you, and I don't think it is. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse. Because that's the memory that haunts."

On February 25, 1969, Bob Kerrey led a raid into a Vietnamese peasant hamlet during which at least 13 unarmed women and children were killed.

“If you could put your own crew together and rob the biggest drug dealer you know, who would that drug dealer be?”

“The grand jury witness who testified that she saw Michael Brown pummel a cop before charging at him ‘like a football player, head down,’ is a troubled, bipolar Missouri woman with a criminal past who has a history of making racist remarks and once insinuated herself into another high-profile St. Louis criminal case with claims that police eventually dismissed as a ‘complete fabrication.’”

The fall of PCCare247, an Indian company in the business of selling fixes to problems that didn’t exist.

Mexico’s drug cartels are moving into the gasoline industry—infiltrating the national oil company, selling stolen fuel on the black market and engaging in open war with the military.

Baba Ramdev renounced the material world twenty-three years ago to become a Hindu ascetic. Now he’s on TV selling toothpaste, instant noodles, and toilet cleaners and the company he is believed to control is poised to become the biggest consumer goods seller in India.

How did Josh Tetrick’s vegan-mayo company become a Silicon Valley darling—and what is he really selling?

On Kimora Lee Simmons, then the head of the Baby Phat clothing company and wife of Russell Simmons.

“Let me take off my glasses,” she says, removing her large frames. “I want you to see my eyes. I will beat a bitch’s ass!”

The absurd scale of McDonald’s’ economics suggests a company more like a commodity trader than a chain of restaurants.

At this volume, and with the impermanence of the sandwich, it only makes sense for McDonald’s to treat the sandwich as a sort of arbitrage strategy: at both ends of the product pipeline, you have a good being traded at such large volume that we might as well forget that one end of the pipeline is hogs and corn and the other end is a sandwich. McDonald’s likely doesn’t think in these terms, and neither should you.

Profile of the flip-flop wearing 61-year-old ‘dude’ who turned around a dying company by selling all-American sex to teens – and isn’t apologizing.

The struggle to build a wine industry in rural China.

A doctor reveals widespread organ harvesting of prisoners in China.

An impossible hike in Western China.

For decades, one company has ruled the world of tampons. But a new wave of brands has emerged, selling themselves as more ethical, more feminist and more ecological.

Booze, sex, and the dark art of dealmaking in China.

The NFL attempts to set up a beachhead in China.

The unlikely people who’ve turned to selling weed in the recession.