A young, pregnant woman named Laci Peterson disappears, her husband begins to act strangely, and one of the largest media circuses in history descends on the sleepy community of Modesto, CA.

A woo-hoo heard around the world.

The Department of Energy is in chaos and it is putting the world at risk.

The many identities of Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace’s murderer.

Pitcairn Island is impossibly remote, populated by descendants of a ship of British mutineers. Their population would not be revealed to the outside world until allegations of a culture of child molestation and rape that led back generations.

How the best tennis player of all time fell in love with the guy who founded Reddit.

Stephen Miller, the 31-year-old White House advisor, became steeped in white nationalism in the unlikeliest of places: a Santa Monica high school and Duke University.

It’s the biggest environmental lawsuit in history. The people of Lago Agrio, an oil-rich area in the Ecuadorean Amazon, are suing Chevron for $6 billion after decades of spills. The case has been underway since 1993.

A comprehensive history of the case against the Menendez brothers, built primarily on secret audio recording made by their self-promoting therapist.

The underground culture of big waves and wild times in 1961 Malibu, and the gang of teenage boys who worshiped at the feet of the beach’s dark prince, surfing legend and grifter Miki Dora.

Over the past 15 years, three people have attempted to restore the humor brand to its former glory. What happened instead was direct-to-video movies, lawsuits, crippling debt, and two prison sentences.

A profile of book editor Nan Talese.

When Clark Rockefeller snatched his daughter during a custody dispute, what the D.A. called “the longest con I’ve seen in my professional career” came unraveled, and the trail led to bones buried in a California backyard.

How Carl Foreman, while tangling with the House Un-American Activities Committee, turned a throwaway Western into an allegory for the Hollywood blacklist.

Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, who left Pro-Choice activism for born-again Christianity and a strange life of financial opportunism, died this week.

The battle to make The Godfather pitted director Francis Ford Coppola against producers including Robert Evans, and the production itself against the real life mob.

How FPAQ, the Canadian group that controls 72 percent of the world’s supply of maple syrup, caused one of the greatest agricultural crimes in history.

After Moneyball became a best-seller, Michael Lewis learned that many of the ideas it presented to the general public had actually been introduced decades earlier by a pair of Israeli psychologists.

Adapted from The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds.

The complicated relationship between Gawker founder Nick Denton and his arch-nemesis investorr Peter Thiel.

Excerpted from Last Girl Before Freeway.

The director of The Exorcist visits the Vatican’s 91-year-old in-house exorcist in Rome.

A profile of “the internet’s boyfriend.”

A couple, well-known New York artists, decamp to L.A., where she intends to direct a movie about a rock star trying to leave a cult. Beck, a friend, signs on, then (possibly under pressure) drops out. Their behavior grows strange, and they rant of constant harassment by Scientologists. They return to New York—to die.

A presidential historian interviews a president focused on history.

Exploring the crime-ridden depths of the internet with Opsec, a former professional hacker.