Iran’s sex-obsessed old guard reacts to a state where “the majority of the population is young.… Young people by nature are horny. Because they are horny, they like to watch satellite channels where there are films or programs they can jerk off to.… We have to do something about satellite television to keep society free from this horny jerk-off situation.”

On bareback horse relay racing, a Native American tradition:

“It’s going to be America’s next extreme sport,” he predicts. “Compare it to Professional Bull Riders, PBR. Look how big that got—a million in prize money in every city they go to. That’s how Indian Relay is going to be in 10 years. I look for it to be at every track in the country by 2025.

On Thanksgiving weekend, I received a phone call informing me that we had just captured approximately 300 al-Qaeda and Taliban. I asked all our assistant secretaries and regional bureaus to canvass literally the world to begin to look at what options we had as to where a detention facility could be established. We began to eliminate places for different reasons. One day, in one of our meetings, we sat there puzzled as places continued to be eliminated. An individual from the Department of Justice effectively blurted out, What about Guantánamo?

“But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs—anybody can have that—I mean in truth. That’s what I write. What it really is like. I’m just telling a very simple story.”

A visit to a Maine museum devoted to Bigfoot and other mythical creatures.

The fight to grant asylum to the translators who worked—and sometimes fought—alongside U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A profile of Larry Garrison, the man who “gets paid to bring tabloid stories to TV news programs.”

On the Balkan musical genre Turbo-Folk, its ties to Serbian ultranationalism, and the strongman nightclub owner who brought it to Croatia.

A newspaper writer’s attempt to solve the mystery of a homeless man who claims to be a once-famous boxer.

Afghans have long visited falbin to have their futures foretold. Fundamentalist Muslim clerics hope to stop that.

After his daughter died in a terrorist attack, Stephen Flatow won an unprecedented judgment against her killers. Then he had to figure out how to actually collect.

Ten stories on guns, ranging from competitive shooting, to girl gangs in Chicago, to the sisters and mothers of mass shooting victims.

A trip to Nashville to interview the writer Ann Patchett.

The article that kept the New Yorker alive was written by a debutante. Who happened to be married to Irving Berlin.

While fleeing their Mali stronghold, al-Qaida left behind documents describing not how to terrorize a population, but how to govern.

When it comes to representing pharmaceutical companies, a doctor’s medical record is far less important than his or her ability to sell.

Where the actual online money is centralized, and where Google will have to go to continue chasing it.

At 33, Wendy Brown stole her daughter’s name, grabbed a pair of pom-poms, and went back to high school. Then she went to jail.

With your mom.

“His goal is to stay in power another day, another year, and to deal with complications when—and if—they arise.”

For years he used fake identities to charm women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then his victims banded together to take him down.

On the cusp of delivery, a mother-to-be recounts the anxiety-laden path to parenthood.

On Bob Woodward’s “rather eerie aversion to engaging the ramifications of what people say to him.”

Why did it take so long for the systems that are supposed to police problem doctors to stop him from operating?