The N.F.L. and the concussion crisis.

Politicians are suddenly eager to disown failed policies on American prisons, but they have failed to reckon with the history. Reconsidering Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on “The Negro Family,” 50 years later. By Ta-Nehisi Coates.

A long, strange day with the least understood basketball star of all time.

A farcical dispute between their owner and the army is threatening to rob Romania’s 1986 European Cup winners of their famous, storied past

Students are paying higher tuition than ever. Why can’t more of that revenue go to the people teaching them?

Paleogenetics is helping to solve the great mystery of prehistory: how did humans spread out over the earth?

Cancer claimed Kim Suozzi at age 23, but she chose to have her brain preserved with the dream that neuroscience might one day revive her.

Can John McAfee, a gun-toting, vodka-swilling serial liar, save us from the hackers who want to spy on us and steal our identities? By Stephen Rodrick.

What writers make in 2015. By Noah Davis.

When UTA raided CAA, poaching 10 top talent reps in less than 24 hours, it did more than set off a conflict that threatens to draw in every agency in town, it shined a light on a dark truth: Bankable stars, like oil, are a vanishing resource. By Maer Roshan.

Two ice cream vendors. Seventeen playgrounds. One city. By Daniel Wolman and Julian Smith.

How do we get people to care about the environment? What if we're asking the wrong question? By Brooke Jarvis.

America's railroads -- and with them, its economy -- nearly ground to a halt in 1894 because one of the wealthiest men in American history decided to grow his own fortune on the backs of hungry workers.

The Deschutes River fly-fishing guide called Stealhead Joe was an angling master with a long list of devoted clients. But as Ian Frazier, who fished with Joe last fall, learned, off the water, Joe’s life was a tangle of troubles that ultimately overwhelmed him.

How the demise of the iconic Four Seasons restaurant may mark the end of a singular sort of masculine power. By Robert Draper.

Judy Clarke excelled at saving the lives of notorious killers. Then she took the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. By Patrick Radden Keefe.

A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it.

Hashem Alsouki risks his life crossing the Mediterranean, his heart set on Sweden – and freedom for his family. By Patrick Kingsley.

“Depression is melancholy minus its charms.” But what are the charms of melancholy? By Carina del Valle Schorske.

In this country, we celebrate the First Amendment, which prevents the government from interfering with religious beliefs and practices. But what if those beliefs and practices make children suffer? By Julia Scheeres.