On the stupid things people say to the elderly.

On playing chess and waiting to get arrested.

In which the author’s wife attempts to break the world record in Tetris.

Joining the water company’s “flushermen” to tour London’s sewers.

One man’s dream to turn America into a post-prohibition wine utopia.

Horowitz went from the New Left to the far right. Now neither side wants him.

As Playboy magazine moves to Los Angeles, the writer considers its place in the Midwest.

No other general interest magazine tried to reach readers in the wide swathe of land between New York and California. “It was a Midwestern magazine, designed for people there. If you wanted it to be hip, edgy, go toe-to-toe with GQ, you were making a mistake,” said Chris Napolitano, a former executive editor who began at Playboy in 1988.

An ode to the MSNBC anchor.

The search for the genetic distinction that allows certain animals, humans included, to be domesticated.

" I really think that for us, who all grew up listening primarily to recorded music, we tend to forget that until about 120 years ago ephemeral experience was the only one people had. I remember reading about a huge fan of Beethoven who lived to the age of 86 [in the era before recordings], and the great triumph of his life was that he’d managed to hear the Fifth Symphony six times. That’s pretty amazing. They would have been spread over many years, so there would have been no way of reliably comparing those performances."

A journey to the wildest edge of the spa industry.

How a cabbie came to assist a jail break.

How Mike Enoch went from progressive to fascist.

A visit to a Trump rally in Ohio.

How New York City responds to terrorism.

"Some in Nice knew the man as one of the many playboy predators the city seems to beget—black hair slicked back off a shining brow, dress shoes tapering to varnished points, a dark shirt unbuttoned low to reveal the pectorals into which he had obsessively, unblushingly, invested himself. He was 31 but preferred older women, both for their erotic openness and, it seems clear, for their money. Those who knew him best knew him to be a cold and brutal man, detached, amused by little save rough sex and gore."

How the hospitality world rents space for physicians to train.

A trip to the White House briefing room and Steve Bannon’s living room.

Malls were supposed to die. Instead they’re just being reimagined (again).

How to run a fashion empire.

Can we treat psychosis by listening to the voices in our heads?

A horse lover visits Chincoteague Island to investigate a transcendent childhood love.

Nathan Phillips wants to talk about Covington.

It’s time to bury the world’s most misleading measure.