On becoming African-American. By Yahdon Israel.

A trip to Myanmar finds the sport that explains nothing and everything about the country at once. By Spencer Hall.

Travels with Vit Jedlicka, the would-be founding father of a libertarian paradise. By Gideon Lewis-Kraus.

One of the last surviving Manhattan Project scientists returns to the crater of the first nuclear bomb on its 70th birthday. By Brian Merchant.

An epic boat race through hundreds of miles of Canadian wilderness. By Eva Holland.

One family hoped their new home would bring a fresh start. But the house held secrets that would cause them years of heartache. By Will Hunt and Matt Wolfe.

Red-hued bees led authorities to discover New York City’s biggest-ever marijuana farm in the basement of a cherry factory—triggering the owner’s suicide.

Concerns about the safety of Teflon and C8 first came to wide public attention more than a decade ago, but the story of DuPont’s involvement with C8 has never been fully told. Internal documents reveal that DuPont long suspected C8 was harmful and yet continued to put the company's workers and the public at risk. By Sharon Lerner.

Are you the Socrates of the National Security Agency? That was the question the NSA asked its workforce in a memo soliciting applications for an in-house ethicist who would write a philosophically minded column about signals intelligence. By Peter Maass.

In this excerpt from The Biology of Desire, neuroscientist and former U of T professor Marc Lewis combines case studies and science to argue against the disease model of treating addiction.

When humanity plans on a geologic time scale. By Elmo Keep.

Can India’s Parsis survive their own success? By Nell Freudenberger.

W. E. B. Du Bois’ 1899 account as a schoolmaster in the American South.

How six survivors experienced the atomic bomb and its aftermath. By John Hersey. (August 31, 1946)

Avies Platt’s account of her meeting with Yeats was recently discovered by Peter Scupham in a carrier bag of diary entries and other bits and bobs. She died in 1976. ‘M.M.’ has not been identified.

Who is Montgomery McFate, the celebrated “Brave Thinker” behind the most touted counterinsurgency program of the 21st century? By John Dolan. [Part two also in the snap]

Why the obsession with our kids’ happiness may be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods. A therapist and mother reports. By Lori Gottlieb.

America is constipated, says one Trump supporter—and The Donald? He’s “our new MiraLAX!” By Drew Magary.

In an age of social-media shaming, a single tweet can launch a crusade. But maybe Ricky Gervais should have picked another woman to mess with. By Kerry Howley.

In the most conservative parts of the country, Muslim women buy body stockings and G-strings from Chinese dealers. By Peter Hessler.