He’s their hero, but he’s also their soulmate, the one person in the world who understands them. That’s why Stephen Wesley and the legions of fans like him can’t get enough of the Mountain Goats. And that burden is crushing Darnielle.

On the passionate relationship between fans and John Danielle of the Mountain Goats.

Putin v. Khodorkovsky:

Almost a decade ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then the owner of the Yukos Oil Company and Russia’s richest man, completely miscalculated the consequences of standing up to Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s president. Putin had Khodorkovsky arrested, completely miscalculating the consequences of putting him in prison. During his eight years in confinement, Khodorkovsky has become Russia’s most trusted public figure and Putin’s biggest political liability. As long as Putin rules Russia and Khodorkovsky continues to act like Khodorkovsky, Khodorkovsky will remain in prison—and Putin will remain terrified of him.

“The dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan interest rates are almost irrelevant. It’s not the cost of the loan that’s the problem, it’s the principal—the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008.”

A little after 9 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1990, the owner of a steel-products company pulled up to her office in Vinegar Hill, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and spotted a black garbage bag sitting on the sidewalk out front. She parked her car and went to move the bag when she noticed it leaking blood. The woman called 911. Within the hour, Ken Whelan, a homicide detective from the 84th Precinct, peered into the bag. It was full of human body parts.

Detroit is trying to end the longstanding practice of “scrapping,” which is the only way some of its residents can earn a living.

In America's third oldest major city, a new sport has been born. It's called rustling cars. According to auto‑theft statis­tics, Newark has the highest rate of car theft per capita in the nation, more than forty cars each day. Sixty‑five percent of the thefts are perpetrated by teens and preteens, known hereabouts as the Doughnut Boys.

An addict navigates 1980s Detroit.

A visit to the hotel North Korea starved to build, still unfinished after breaking ground in 1987.

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

On the investors betting big on the Iraqi economy, which they believe has nowhere to go but up.

An interview with the novelist.

The magician who spent his life debunking spiritualists and exposing con men.

How Warren Hinckle and Ramparts magazine helped revive muckraking journalism and launch the New Left.

How Andrew Anglin went from being an antiracist vegan to the alt-right’s most vicious troll.

Charlie Santore sees Los Angeles from the inside, by breaking into safes whose owners can no longer unlock them.

What one funny-looking fish taught us about evolution, the internet, and the monsters we create.

Thomas Joshua Cooper risks his life to document the world’s remotest places.

An insider watches Kink.com prepare to leave the hundred-year-old armory it occupies in San Francisco.

On the fraught relationship between Bolivia’s Evo Morales and the indigenous activists who support him.

How the state’s “restitution program” forces poor people to work off small debts.

As vaccines roll out, the U.S. will face a choice about what to learn and what to forget.

How the writer Jesse Armstrong keeps the billionaire Roy family trapped in its gilded cage.

On the Camino de Santiago, a female pilgrim walks in solitude—utterly vulnerable, utterly free.

A history of the divide between computing and language, and why we “define and regiment our lives, including our social lives and our perceptions of our selves, in ways that are conducive to what a computer can ‘understand.’”

An oral history of Industrial Lights & Magic, which gave birth to Star Wars and countless films, as well as playing a hand in the creation of Photoshop and Pixar.