An interview with the ‘media ecologist’ on corporations, feudalism, the Dark Ages, the birth of currency, debt, how PR was invented, and why—

"...Any man that has a mortgage to pay is not going to be a revolutionary. With that amount to pay back, he’s got a stake in the system. True, he’s on the short end of the stick of the interest economy, but in 30 years he could own his own home."

Inside the Shel Silverstein archive.

One of the things you learn is that “polymath” doesn’t even begin to describe Silverstein. His creativity extended in so many directions that his archivists must be versed not just in turn-of-the-century world children’s literature, but Waylon Jennings’s deep cuts; not just in reel-to-reel tape preservation, but how to keep an old restaurant napkin scribbled with lyrics from falling apart.

I've grown, over the last few months, the beginnings of concerned; he's started to suffer bouts of malaise. Nothing too regular, or too terrible: mild stomach aches, sore joints, general lethargy. In anyone else, it could be anything, etc. In Chad, I grow attuned to the slightest variation in temperature, to the distracted look behind his eyes when food isn't sitting with him.

A secret hope of mine, which I now find hilarious: I imagined that once I had a child, I would become a faster writer. Faster, and also better. It’s hard for me to reconstruct the optimistic logic that led me to this hypothesis. I think I honestly believed that if I did not have the option to write badly, I would simply evolve, like that Lamarckian giraffe, into a more efficient creature.

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

In northern Nigeria, radical Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram is facing a vigilante backlash from armed teenagers with nothing to lose.

For many, the answer from the state is “yes.” An investigation into what legally determines a person’s ability to parent.

The creator of Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy offers advice to the Dartmouth class of 2014.

Courtland Kelley knew there was a problem more than a decade ago. He tried to speak up. He sued. He lost.

How the Pentagon makes “Koch Industries look like an organic farm” when it comes to toxic water contamination.

How to understand the real-world value of things that are worth nothing and everything at once.

Arlena Lindley’s boyfriend Alonzo Turner beat her for months and murdered her child. So why was she sent to prison for 45 years?

An inside look at the Democratic infighting and Republican gameplan (“Obama, Obama, Obama”) that led to the midterm landslide.

How the self-proclaimed “inventor of all things streaming” went from dot-com millionaire to crime ring accomplice.

On the 1,600-year-old text that suggests that Jesus, long believed to be celibate, was a married man.

What it’s like to be Enzyte’s “Smiling Bob,” and other tales of acting as a product’s public face.

A 21-year-old UCLA math major leaves his $9,000-a-month internship to fight with the rebels in Libya.

How a Tulsa preacher used direct mail to create the American religious right.

A week in the author’s life when it became impossible to control the course of events.

A nationally respected neurologist feeds secrets to Wall Street.

On Lucille Miller, who in San Bernadino in 1964 was convicted of burning her husband to death in his Volkswagen.

The author visits Franklin County, Mississippi, where, according to census data, there are zero same-sex couples.

Shulamith Firestone, one of the first radical feminists, helped to create a new society. But she couldn’t live in it.

On “Operation Bambi,” the secret plan to oust “Today” show co-host Ann Curry.

In 2011, just before Christmas, a tiny Spanish town won 120 million Euros in the lottery. A trip to the new Sodeto.