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Could kratom, a plant-based supplement signal the end of the opioid crisis?

In an personal essay, the writer Min Li Chan reflects on the multiculturalism of Micheal Jackson’s later work and his historic concert in Malaysia in 1996.

The poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib on the rituals of his faith that have, for him, fallen away, and those that have endured.

Bim Adewumni reports on three black women at Kensington Publishing who bring romance novels with black protagonists to the marketplace.

Anne Helen Petersen profiles former state representative Paulette Jordan in her bid to capture the Democratic nomination for governor of Idaho. A member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Jordan could be the first country’s Native American governor and Idaho’s first Democrat to hold the office since 1995.

BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith recalls what it was like working as a young reporter in Belarus in 2001. One of his first major stories resulted in his source being beaten and thrown in jail — or so he thought, until he discovered the truth more than 15 years later.

Big lies, small lies, lies of omission. Leslie Jamison fesses up to how lying had become a way to avoid conflict, her flaws, and having to face up to and deal with her uglier emotions.

Joan Didion didn’t shy away from criticizing everything and everyone from The Sound of Music and J.D. Salinger, and she did it with flair and a voice all her own.

The Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail is, at 54 miles, the shortest of America’s 19 National Historic Trails. It is also a hike in which the walking of it is a political act, and Rahawa Haile decides she has no choice but to hike it in the early days of the Trump Administration.

There is no denying that Tony Kushner’s play “Angels in America” is a profound work of art, but on the eve of yet another production (a Broadway run), Steven Thrasher raises a significant and frankly troubling question: as the play is (largely) filtered through the lens of white gay men, how many millions of experiences from gay people of color have been hidden from mainstream sight?