He’d sold his company, chartered a yacht, and set off with his model girlfriend to see the world. Finally, it seemed, Chris Smith was living the life he’d always wanted. But back home there was trouble: missing money, unraveling secrets, and a sudden question. Where the hell was Chris Smith, really?
A week with DJ Avicii.
On January 13th, 2018, the residents of Hawaii picked up their phones to find a warning: a missile would be hitting the islands imminently. Here’s what people do when they think they only have 38 minutes left to live.
The star on her unstoppable rise, repping gang life, and the peril of butt injections.
“Tiffany Haddish may, in fact, be too good at being Tiffany Haddish. Too good at seeming like one of your friends who became famous. At times, she treats her new fame like she is on a group text with the world.”
When Ben Roethlisberger, Charles Barkley, Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal and the future President of the United States crossed paths at a celebrity golf tournament.
John Francis Anthony “Jaco” Pastorius III lay comatose in the intensive-care unit of a Fort Lauderdale hospital for nine days, unrecognized until he was spotted by the doctor who had delivered his children. Once he had been identified, local newspapers ran photographs to accompany stories headlined “DARK DAYS FOR A JAZZ GENIUS” and “JAZZ PERFORMER’S LIFE STRIKES A TRAGIC CHORD” and “THE LONG, SAD SLIDE OF A GIFTED MUSIClAN.” The various photographs seemed to be of different men.
How to run a fashion empire.
If you are an enemy of Putin, there’s one city where intrigue and assassins are bound to follow you.
Meet Mel Bernstein. He goes by the name Dragonman, and he’s one of the largest independent purveyors of firearms in the western United States, and the self-proclaimed most armed man in America. At Dragonland—his home, shop, shooting range, and military museum outside Colorado Springs—no gun sells quicker than the weapon used in the most recent mass shooting. Amidst a new gun conversation, it’s business as usual. But even here, it turns out there’s a price to pay.
The disappearance of a once ubiquitous movie star.
A star explodes.
“Your dreams always have to be big. And mine were huge.”
The outsized legacy of the emo rapper who always said he would die young.
A late night host finds a new voice.
A profile of the director.
Kobe Bryant knows who he is, and he’s happy to tell you all about it.
A profile of the diva who is proving that drag is entertainment for everyone.
The story of the Grenfell Tower fire.
What the heck happened?
How an American-born businessman became an enemy of the Russian state.
Outkast’s Andre Benjamin at 42.
You gotta understand, I’ve only written one check in my life. When I was 17, they still had checkbooks, and my mom taught me how to write a check and do my balance. So I had one check on my balance, and then OutKast took off. I have not paid a bill since. People ask, What does it feel like? As humans, we want attention. We want to be validated. At the same time, it’s strange attention, and a lot of it. If you have an excess of anything, it becomes strange.
There’s no telling how many guns there are in America—and when one gets used in a crime, no way for the cops to connect it to its owner. The only place the police can turn for help is a Kafkaesque agency in West Virginia, where, thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal and detective work is absurdly antiquated. On purpose.
The Syrian refugee said his name was Paul, and that he was 16 years old. The truth was much more complicated.
T La Rock was one of the pioneers of hip-hop. But after an attack put him in a nursing home, he had to fight to recover his identity, starting with the fact that he’d ever been a rapper at all.
