How a Hollywood icon found himself at a dead end.

How a senseless double murder in Florida exposed the rise of an organized fascist youth movement in the United States.

An interview with Cobain a few months after the release of In Utero.

A profile of Spears at her nadir.

A jailhouse interview.

How extreme weather, which displaced more than a million people last year, could reshape America.

Developed by early computer engineers in their spare time, improved in University comp-sci labs, and ultimately sold in coffeeshops for ten cents per game. Inside one of the most influential games ever played.

How legends of the American music industry made millions off the work of Solomon Linda, a Zulu tribesman who wrote “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and died a pauper.

A jailhouse interview.

The rise and fall of a chubby Idaho pizza delivery boy turned weed kingpin.

An estimated 70,000 transgender youth lack secure housing. This is what life on the streets is like for six of them.

A thirty-year-old Tom Petty on the brink of Damn the Torpedoes.

A Manson-contemporary cult group rises out of a jug band, builds a fortress in the Boston ghetto, bullies control of a community newspaper, swallows a successful actor, fractures, splits for California, and attempts to describe to the reporter the enigma that is Mel Lyman.

Inside the singular world of Longmont Potion Castle.

“I learned about sex in a Laundromat. The setting wasn’t my idea. It was my mother’s who had brought me along on washday to break the news.”

Ricky Rodriguez was born in the role of the messiah. His father was David Berg, the leader of the polygamous/incestuous cult The Children of God, which published a book documenting his early life:

In 1982 a shop in Spain printed several thousand copies of a book that was then distributed to group members around the world. Bound in faux leather, illustrated with hundreds of photographs, the 762-page tome meticulously chronicled Ricky's young life and was intended as a child-rearing manual for families. Its title, The Story of Davidito, was stamped in gold. With its combination of earnest prose and unabashed child pornography, it is perhaps the most disturbing book ever published in the name of religion.

Eventually, he left the cult and found work as an electrician. But revenge called him back.

Covering a presidential candidate and the people who cover presidential candidates aboard the press buses Bullshit 1 and Bullshit 2 on the 2000 John McCain campaign trail.

He hacked a hospital to protest their treatment of a sick child. Now he’s facing 15 years.

In the ’50s and ’60s, the Reverend Will Campbell marched with MLK Jr. and worked to desegregate the University of Mississippi. Later, broke, he took a job as Waylon Jennings’ roadie and occasional spiritual guru. Afterward, his ministry grew even stranger and more itinerant.

An anatomy of a failure.

A 16-year-old journalist goes on tour with a band on top. The article that inspired Almost Famous.

”In West Antarctica, scientists have discovered the engine of catastrophe.”

On the road with the comic after a bitter divorce.

On the underground doctors unleashing the healing powers of hallucinogens.

A profile of America’s new education secretary.