An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too.

The Long Read: When I hit a slump in middle age, I set out on a quest to see if playing better chess would make me a better person. I was unprepared for the pain of defeat

The narrow roads are quiet and winding, surrounded by rolling green fields and few visible signs of life beyond the occasional herd of sheep. But on the horizon, massive white golf ball-like domes protrude from the earth, protected behind a perimeter fence that is topped with piercing razor wire. Here, in the heart of the tranquil English countryside, is the National Security Agency’s largest overseas spying base.

Fifteen years after the U.S. declared drug-resistant infections to be a grave threat, the crisis is only worsening, a Reuters investigation finds, as government agencies remain unwilling or unable to impose reporting requirements on a healthcare industry that often hides the problem.

The tall, lanky American dressed in all black looked familiar. But Ajith, a 44-year-old Sri Lankan refugee seeking asylum in Hong Kong figured the nervous-looking man with the red-rimmed eyes fidgeting in the darkness outside the United Nations building in the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon was a U.S. army dodger. Summoned by his immigration lawyer in the late evening of June 10, 2013, Ajith (last names of the refugees in this story have been withheld), a former soldier in...

Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will. Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution. Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal.

Although many people still view Bosnia with trepidation, its dramatic landscapes and singular history are making it an increasingly popular destination.

It’s an alarming statement from Cory Bernardi and one that is dredging up some heated debate. He’s part of outspoken group of right-wing politicians and commentators outraged by Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which they allege limits our free speech. Is he right? On the surface, what’s so wrong about defending free speech? We as a society hold freedom of speech up as one of our greatest attributes, a cornerstone of our democracy. TV and movies have bashed into us the idea that it should be defended at all costs. So why are people attacking Cory Bernardi?

Premier Cru’s John Fox got his clients rare vintages at deep discounts when they purchased cases on “pre-arrival.” Then a few too many failed to arrive.

By the time Rachel was hospitalized at New York City's Cornell Weill Psychiatry Specialty Center in July 2014, she was almost too exhausted to speak. For years, she had been traveling the same cloistered, unrelenting path on which many female members of her branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism find themselves: arranged marriage at 18, a domineering, sometimes abusive husband with whom she would have a bevy of kids. Duty, family, duty, duty. She was breaking slowly under that weight, and worst of all, she had no one to talk to.

Dee Dee Blancharde was a model parent: a tireless single mom taking care of her gravely ill child. But after Dee Dee was killed, it turned out things weren’t as they appeared — and her daughter Gypsy had never been sick at all. For seven years before the murder, Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blancharde lived in a small pink bungalow on West Volunteer Way in Springfield, Missouri. Their neighbors liked them. “’Sweet’ is the word I’d use,” a former friend of Dee Dee’s told me not too long ago. Once you met them, people said, they were impossible to forget.

You could say the job of the sports fan is not only to cheer but to jeer. Take the Rio Olympics. American sprinter Justin Gatlin, who has been suspended in the past for doping, entered Olympic Stadium before his 100-meter race to resounding boos. Competitors are also a part of the ritual. After winning a gold medal, American swimmer Lilly King wagged her finger to mock her Russian competitor Yulia Efimova, who previously had been suspended for doping.

It feels a bit strange to say this now, but in the spring of 2014 there was no better place to work than Gawker. For a certain kind of person, at any rate — ambitious, rebellious, and eager for attention, all of which I was. Just over a decade old, Gawker still thought of itself as a pirate ship, but a very big pirate ship, ballasted by semi-respectable journalism, and much less prone to setting itself on fire than in its early days, when its writers had a tendency to make loud and famous enemies and when its staff was subjected to near-annual purges...

Even as legacy music shops continue to shutter across the country, Midwestern institution Used Kids has managed to stay afloat for the last 30 years and counting. How do they do it? By Joel Oliphint.

Over four decades, the Hobet coal mine transformed from a small operation to a magnet for corporate buyouts. Its shift tells a larger story of coal in decline.

Over the last three decades, massive sulcata tortoises have become a popular American family pet. Meet the people who made that happen — and the ones that are begging you not to buy one.

On 22 June 2015, Xavier Justo, a 48-year-old retired Swiss banker, walked towards the front door of his brand new boutique hotel on Koh Samui, a tropical Thai island. He had spent the past three years building the luxurious white-stone complex of chalets and apartments overlooking the shimmering sea and was almost ready to open for business. All he needed was a licence. Justo had arrived in Thailand four years earlier, having fled the drab world of finance in London. In 2011, he and his girlfriend Laura toured the...

A clandestine cult with twenty children to a room, no outside music, movies or books, and no contact beyond the compound. For the first fifteen years of my life, this was my normal. By Flor Edwards. (April 9, 2014)

The Darién Gap is one of the world’s most dangerous places, a lawless, roadless wilderness on the border of Colombia and Panama, teeming with everything from deadly snakes to drug traffickers to antigovernment guerrillas. These days the region is also seeing a steady flow of migrants from Cuba, Africa, and Asia, whose desperation to reach the U.S. sends them on a perilous course through no-man’s-land. Jason Motlagh plunged in, risking robbery, kidnapping, and death to document one of the most harrowing treks on earth.

These are dark times for science so we asked hundreds of researchers how to fix it. Science is in big trouble. Or so we’re told. In the past several years, many scientists have become afflicted with a serious case of doubt — doubt in the very institution of science. Explore the biggest challenges facing science, and how we can fix them: As reporters covering medicine, psychology, climate change, and other areas of research, we wanted to understand this epidemic of doubt.