The inside story of a golden child, the killers she hired, and the parents she wanted dead. By Karen K. Ho.

Perhaps the greatest polo player ever, Adolfo Cambiaso is planning to compete on a pony that died nearly a decade ago—a clone of his beloved stallion Aiken Cura. With more than 25 replicas of champion horses now in existence, Haley Cohen explores how the science came to polo.

Is “Mind Reading” Deception Detection Sci-Fi—or Science? By Eli Wolfe.

You don't see an All Star Comics #3 every day. Published in 1940, it’s a milestone in what’s known as the Golden Age of comic books: the debut of the first bonafide superhero team, the Justice Society of America. There’s hardly a plot, only a meeting of some of DC’s biggest stars — Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman — taking turns sharing tales as if they were telling ghost stories at a campfire.

With American transportation in crisis, why are we spending our money on massive new roads? An investigation of one city’s addiction to megahighways. By Michael Grunwald.

Are gamekeepers killing off Britain's raptors? It's a question that gets to the heart of our right to privacy – and to roam.

After a life of football, Joe Namath fears he has brain damage. But he's sold on a dubious treatment -- and wants others to buy in too. By Peter Keating.

The man who led the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie Groves, was an ‘abrasive and sarcastic S.O.B’. But, writes Seamus Sweeney, he also produced what may be one of the best guides to project management ever written…

Al Seckel has left the country. But the world’s greatest collector of optical illusions left some troubles behind. By Mark Oppenheimer.

Classical physics, with its totally determinative, forward-in-time, billiard-ball causation, requires sweeping anomalies like psi under the rug, not to mention resigning ourselves to an absence of higher meaning and direction in the universe. Even the local islands of order allowed within the framework of dynamical systems theory... By Eric Wargo.

The victims of crime who go to prisons to confront criminals, and why they do it. By Mark Obbie.

A video shows at least four unarmed men being gunned down in the water. Despite dozens of witnesses, the killings went unreported and remain a mystery.

Carlos and Roby are two ex-convicts with a simple mission: picking up inmates on the day they’re released from prison and guiding them through a changed world. By Jon Mooallem.

How Rise of the Tomb Raider is forging a gaming icon.

Last winter, two bodies in identical wetsuits were found in Norway and the Netherlands. Police in three countries failed to identify them — and then the trail led to Calais. By Anders Fjellberg.

In 1982, Trip Hawkins founded Electronic Arts on the principle that the makers of video games ought to be treated like creative superstars. Within a few years, that changed. What happened? By Colin Campbell.

Pumping wells in the dark of night, criminal bosses rule the liquid economy in one of the world’s busiest cities. Can anyone stop them? By Aman Sethi.

The latest Ebola crisis may yield clues about where it hides between outbreaks. By David Quammen.

Thirty days in a gay CrossFit cult. By Chadwick Moore.

Center-left pundits have carried water for the president for six years. Their predictable excuses all ring hollow. By Thomas Frank. (January)