Lee Berger is unquestionably a paleoanthropologist. But is he a visionary or a hype artist?

Over the past five years, the Syrian government has killed almost 700 medical personnel. Inside the race to spread medical knowledge as the Assad regime erases it.

An American reporter takes on the Yakuza.

How Derrick Hamilton went from wrongfully convicted to legal scholar to free.

A study of the Mississippi River, its history, and efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to hold it in place.

A profile of Chloë Sevigny, 19-year-old It Girl.

Behind a Muslim community in northern Wyoming — and 20 percent of all Muslims in the state — lies one very enterprising man.

Life problems imagined as fantasies.

Libertarian, futurist, billionaire: a profile of Peter Thiel.

On trigger warnings, allyship, intersectionality, and what’s really eating Oberlin.

Hervé Falciani, a computer engineer working at HSBC, stole the bank’s list of secret accounts. But was he out to expose tax cheats or get rich himself? Perhaps both.

On the science of touch.

Treasure hunters still scour Lower Silesia in search of legendary wartime riches.

The horror of being mentally ill in Florida’s prisons.

A profile of Erykah Badu.

A profile of author Maggie Nelson.

How war-crimes investigators captured top-secret documents tying the Syrian regime to mass murder.

Immigrant nannies leave their own children behind to care for others’.

The real-time intersection of race, crime, reality, and entertainment.

A profile of Merle Haggard.

Fifty years ago, Geraldo Foos bought the Manor House Motel. While his customers had sex, he watched from above and took scrupulous notes. Only three people in the world knew what he was doing: Foos, his wife, and the author.

The story of Jejoen Bontinck, a Belgian teen-ager who travelled to Syria to fight with radical Islamists.

The genetics of schizophrenia.

Kate del Castillo, the actress who brought Sean Penn to Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, tells her side of the story.

When juveniles are found guilty of sexual misconduct, the sex-offender registry can be a life sentence.