Jeremy Wilson spent years crisscrossing the country and inventing new identities as a war hero, an MIT grad, a Hollywood journalist, and more.

Before a disastrous blight, the American chestnut was a keystone species in eastern forests. Could genetic engineering help bring it back?

How what was once one of the most popular websites on Earth—with ambitions to redefine music, dating, and pop culture—became a graveyard of terrible design and failed corporate initiatives:

In retrospect, DeWolfe says, the imperative to monetize the site stunted its evolution: "When we did the Google deal, we basically doubled the ads on our site," making it more cluttered. The size, quality, and placement of ads became another source of tension with News Corp., according to DeWolfe and another executive. "Remember the rotten teeth ad?" DeWolfe says. "And the weight-loss ads that would show a stomach bulging over a pair of pants?"

“In some ways fame is gratifying, but you have to be very careful of what you wish for because you just might get it.”

The urban legend about the guy who hooked a rocket up to the back of his car and drove/flew it into a mountain? The anonymous author claims the story is about him and some of his small town high school buddies.

“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.”

On literary tourism:

Dickens World, in other words, sounded less like a viable business than it did a mockumentary, or a George Saunders short story, or the thought experiment of a radical Marxist seeking to expose the terminal bankruptcy at the heart of consumerism. And yet it was real.

Yemen on the brink of hell:

In a sense, south Yemen itself offers a grim cautionary tale about the events now unfolding in Taiz and across the country. Until 1990, when the two Yemens merged, South Yemen was a beacon of development and order. Under the British, who ruled the south as a colony until 1967, and the Socialists, who ran it for two decades afterward, South Yemen had much higher literacy rates than the north. Child marriage and other degrading tribal practices came to an end; women entered the work force, and the full facial veil became a rarity. It was only after Ali Abdullah Saleh imposed his writ that things began to change. When the south dared to rebel against him in 1994, Saleh sent bands of jihadis to punish it. The north began treating the south like a slave state, expropriating vast plots of private and public land for northerners, along with the oil profits. Tribal practices returned. Violent jihadism began to grow.

How the illegitimate son of Liberian ex-President (and accused cannibal) Charles Taylor went from being a small time Florida hoodlum to one of Africa’s most notorious killers.

Hucksters claim that drinking a few drops of hydrogen peroxide diluted in a glass of water will cure almost anything.

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.