Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. By Seymour Hersh.

Today’s young children are working more, but they’re learning less.

A surprisingly more-than-mildly investigative report into hipster chocolate.

A story of ruined reputations and failed memory, of courage and corruption, and a pair of poor black men who became pawns in a bitter political war. By Matthew Shaer.

Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern, who was hired to revitalize the charity, has cut hundreds of chapters and thousands of employees.

Those left behind by Silicon Valley’s technology boom struggle to stay in the place they call home. By Sarah Green.

Uprooted from his life and family in the United States, a Honduran deportee returns to the country that he tried so hard to escape. By Luke Mogelson.

The saber-toothed cat is one of the most famous of prehistoric icons, but perhaps one of the most neglected when it comes to public understanding.

Even when temperatures climb into the high teens, ice caves a few metres below ground remain frozen solid

Little Richard, now eighty-two years old, has reportedly been living the last several years in a penthouse suite at the Hilton hotel in downtown Nashville (the Hilton will neither confirm nor deny that they have a guest named Mr. Penniman). I knew someone who knew someone who had his cell phone number, and in June, I cold-called him. By David Ramsey.

Teens are getting famous on a social network you’ve probably never heard of. By Amanda Hess.

Long before the gallery she built was famously robbed, Isabella Stewart Gardner was shocking 19th-century society with her disregard for convention. By Lyz Lenz.

Against the false narratives of anorexia. By Katy Waldman.

A solitary canoeist meets his fate. By Ben McGrath.

The strange life and tragic death of Julia the gorilla. By Anna Krien.

Military strategist, classical scholar, cattle rancher – and an adviser to presidents, prime ministers, and the Dalai Lama. Just who is Edward Luttwak? And why do very powerful people pay vast sums for his advice? By Thomas Meaney.

Early one morning, in September 1982, hundreds of young Russians were waiting in a Moscow TV studio for an image of Southern California to appear on a giant screen. All of a sudden, there it was, live via satellite: a crowd of hundreds of thousands of sweltering Americans, blanketing the desert in front of a rock star-worthy stage and even bigger screens, backed by a ripple of mountains... By Sarah Laskow.

Every year, roughly 40,000 people die in Minnesota. For some, it’s weeks or months before anyone finds their bodies. Meet the crew who comes in to clean up the mess. By Andy Mannix.

Baynazar Mohammad Nazar was a husband and a father of four — and a patient killed during the attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz. This is his story. By Andrew Quilty.

Another mass shooting was over. The country had moved on. But inside one house in Oregon, a family was discovering the extent of a wound. By Eli Saslow.