Below, our favorite stories of the week.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

1. How Elizabeth Holmes’s House of Cards Came Tumbling Down

Nick Bilton | Vanity Fair | Sept. 6, 2016 | 14 minutes (5,119 words)

At once-lauded biotech start-up Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes built a multi-billion-dollar corporation on a foundation of questionable science and secrecy.

2. The FBI Accused Him of Terrorism. He Couldn’t Tie His Shoes.

Jessica Pishko | Esquire | Sept. 8, 2016 | 51 minutes (3,722 words)

A disabled 18-year-old named Peyton Pruitt, who functions at the level of an 8-year-old child, is accused of becoming an ISIS recruit.

3. The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

Ariel Levy | The New Yorker | Sept. 5, 2016 | 21 minutes (5,413 words)

The ancient South American hallucinogen ayahuasca has become America’s psychedelic drug du jour, with everyone from Baby Boomers and Millennials to the Silicon Valley set seeking its potent revelations about harmony and interspecies unity. To hear the plants speak, all you need is money and some strength of mind.

4. My Father Was an Abusive Sociopath, And I Was the Only One He Had Left

Christina Wallace | Elle | Sept. 8, 2016 | 17 minutes (4,328 words)

Christina Wallace’s devastating essay about being called upon to place into a nursing home the sociopathic father she hadn’t seen in years—who’d molested her, and beaten her mother—and to then attend his funeral.

5. The 24-Year-Old Coca-Cola Virgin

Jamie Lauren Keiles | Eater | Sept. 7, 2016 | 22 minutes (5,573 words)

“If you’re looking for evidence of mass commonality, it doesn’t come cheaper or more convenient than Coke. It’s consumed around 1.9 billion times per day, and distributed everywhere except North Korea and Cuba (for now). Through Coke we all have something in common — Liz Taylor knows it, the president knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. I, on the other hand, can only trust and speculate. I’ve never had a Coke in my life.”