A father, his dying son, and the quest to make the most profound video game ever.

A profile of Tyler Perry.

On the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, women express themselves through fierce short poems.

When James Brown died on Christmas Day 2006, he left behind a fortune worth tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars. The problem is, he also left behind fourteen children, sixteen grandchildren, eight mothers of his children, several mistresses, thirty lawyers, a former manager, an aging dancer, a longtime valet, and a sister who’s really not a sister but calls herself the Godsister of Soul anyway.

Life as the most famous children’s musician on earth.

“You read enough books in which people like you are disposable, or are dirt, or are silent, absent, or worthless, and it makes an impact on you. Because art makes the world, because it matters, because it makes us. Or breaks us.”

Fargo, Damages, Cheers, and Leslie Nielsen’s fart machine.

The origin story of Gabriel García Márquez’s classic.

A profile of Killer Mike, the self-described “gangsta rap suburban father” whose speech about Ferguson went viral last fall.

On the false narratives of anorexia.

A profile of Transparent creator Jill Soloway.

An interview with Michael Schur, who wrote for Saturday Night Live and The Office before co-creating Parks and Recreation and Brookyn Nine-Nine.

“She can write like a man, they said, by which they meant, She can write.”

The musicians of Mali find themselves in the middle of a civil war.

“Missy (Misdemeanor) Elliott, the twenty-five-year-old hip-hop performer who is energetically redefining the boundaries of rap music, is a singer, a songwriter, an arranger, a producer, and a talent scout. Six months ago, few people outside the music industry had heard of her; six months from now, it will be necessary to pretend that you’ve known about Missy Elliott for years.”

The true love story of Peanuts.

A profile of the writer.

While on a string of tour dates opening for Radiohead, interaction between Mark Linkous’ antidepressants and the Rohypnol he took to sleep caused him to pass out. A hotel maid found him the next morning bent into a position where his legs had been cut off from circulation. When they untangled, built-up potassium shot from his lower body upward, triggering a harmful chain reaction that caused a heart attack and kidney failure.

In what will likely be his last political act, Willie Nelson declares war on corporate marijuana.

A conversation with “the most popular human alive.”

An interview with Joanna Newsom.

Mark Hogancamp nearly died after being jumped by five men in 2000. After waking from a coma with no memories, he developed an extraordinary coping device: he built a miniature town in his garden where he gets his revenge.

“People who didn’t live pre-Internet can’t grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I’ll never see it again.”

The ridiculousness of trying to rank the best restaurants in the world.

A year after her death, a tribute to the Saturday Night Live star who didn’t want to be on TV.