Was the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre actually a smokescreen to obscure an even more audacious art crime?

An interview with cinematographer Harris Savides on the enduring appeal of the visual style of films shot in the 1970s.

The forgotten life of Eva Tanguay, perhaps America’s first rock star.

How a dental equipment salesman from Germany named Klaus Teuber invented the perfect board game, Settlers of Catan.

What the great romantic novels of history can tell us about “seduction theory” and the cult of the pickup artist.

Vignettes of the residents of South Elliot Place.

A writer for Conan O’Brien on how The Tonight Show really ended and on how his boss got screwed.

Bill Murray grants a rare interview and appears to admit, among other things, that he occasionally approaches strangers from behind on the streets of NYC, puts his hands over their eyes, and says “guess who.”

In March of 1991, Vanilla Ice had the #1 album in the country (To the Extreme), a movie about to be released (TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze), and a dogged belief that his 15 minutes weren’t about to end.

An awkward journalist-Russell Crowe friendship turns even more awkward.

A interview with David Mitchell, author of the recent The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Cloud Atlas, on stretching a fictional universe across multiple novels and centuries of real history.

The man who keeps finding famous fingerprints on uncelebrated works of art.

An interview with New Yorker critic Alex Ross about his book The Rest is Noise and why there’s really no such thing as “classical music.”

A 1988 profile of Bill Murray, then at the peak of his box office power and living in a secluded farmhouse in the Hudson River Valley.

The story of the most popular music video of all time, including memories of a then-25-year-old Michael Jackson on and off the set. Director John Landis: “I dealt with Michael as I would have a really gifted child.”

How Warren Beatty seduced the studios into making the comedy Ishtar, which set the modern bar for cinematic debacles. (An excerpt from Peter Biskind’s Star.)

Clay Shirky, writing in 1999 on the Web eclipsing TV’s reach: “We will always have massive media, but the days of mass media are over, killed by the explosion of possibility and torn into a thousand niches.”

The rise and fall of Design Within Reach.

The boom in dystopian fiction aimed at young adults.

An email dialogue between David Gates and Jonathan Lethem on writing fiction in the age of online experiences.

The 1979 Oscars pitted Hal Ashby’s Coming Home against Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, wildly different films both on the topic of the Vietnam War.

Born in Germany, raised in Montana, now living in New York, comedian Reggie Watts describes his style as “culture sampling.”

The Onion’s Keith Phipps retraces the route Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda followed in Easy Rider.

The head of the Social Security Administration’s secret life as a respected poet.

In need of a new lead singer, Journey settled on an unknown 40-year-old from the Philippines whose clips they found online. Arnel Pineda was perfect: just a small-town boy, living in a lonely world.