While other conservatives say that the American state has become too powerful, Francis Fukuyama argues that it has grown too weak. By John Dilulio Jr. (December)

Few places on earth are as free from legal oversight as the high seas. One ship has been among the most persistent offenders. By Ian Urbina.

When my husband and I set out to find a nursery school for our daughter, Faith, nearly ten years ago we took the decision seriously. I looked at large parent-run cooperatives and visited small home-based operations. Jeff studied the pink towers and chiming bells at the Montessori school on the hill... By Sandra Steingraber. (2011)

Two raids, five deaths and a suspected suicide as authorities closed in on him.

Is domestication a final hope for the world’s rhinos? By Carly Nairn.

A political buffet offering everything but science.

Street-level war has now spread to every city, as civilians and criminals alike face deadly injustice at the hands of the police.

Neighbors battle pig farms and their stinky manure-filled lagoons in North Carolina. By Lily Kuo.

Inside the autopsy lab, pathologists talk about the emotional rewards of medicine's most-maligned specialty—and what it's like to work side-by-side with death. By Rachel Wilkinson.

Tech and Silicon Valley Turn to Mystics for Advice. By Jeremy Lybarger.

Fifty years ago, Alice Crimmins’s children died, and she was the prime suspect. The trials that followed ensured we’d never know who murdered them—only that a woman’s life could be used against her.

Alberto Nisman accused Iran and Argentina of colluding to bury a terrorist attack. It may have got him killed. By Dexter Filkins.

Why I don’t talk about race with White people

When the Andean exotica singer Yma Sumac became famous in the United States for her supposed Inca heritage and five-octave voice, her fellow Peruvians called her a sellout. Ethnomusicologist Zoila Mendoza, however, knew Yma Sumac as her mother’s childhood friend... (2013)

I expected to like Kate Bolick’s recent book Spinster. I would certainly seem to be its ideal reader. After all, I’m someone who sometimes identifies as a spinster, who reveres “spinster” as a cultural category, and who was clunkily complimented by a fellow grad student when I was 29 for “the bold way you are resignifying the term...” By Briallen Hopper.

Police shooting of Caroline Small was ’worst’ ever seen, GBI agent says. Officers were cleared in 2010 case riddled with special treatment, AJC investigation finds.

Is genetically engineered food dangerous? Many people seem to think it is. In the past five years, companies have submitted more than 27,000 products to the Non-GMO Project, which certifies goods that are free of genetically modified organisms. Last year, sales of such products nearly tripled. Whole Foods will soon require labels on all GMOs in its stores. Abbott, the company that makes Similac baby formula, has created a non-GMO version to give parents “peace of mind.”

Learn how gnashing fangs, horrible claws and blood splatters from the ceiling became an unlikely part of the Magic Kingdom's most infamous attraction.

A rare condition causes Joel Salinas to experience other people's emotions and sensations. Is mirror-touch synesthesia a superpower or a curse?

Using modern technology and old-fashioned sleuthing, two adventurers chase the wreck of a legendary pirate ship, the Golden Fleece, that vanished in the Caribbean.