In late 1960s London, famed psychoanalyst R.D. Laing created a radical asylum—one with no doctors, no locks, and no limits.

What happens when robots act just like humans?

“The main characteristic of Diane was courage.”

Barbara Williamson co-founded Sandstone, one of the most famous radical experiments in group sex and communal living of the 1970s. Then she got wild.

On claiming the conquistador Juan Ponce de León as an ancestor and the fictions we tell ourselves.

In 1966, Anton LaVey introduced the world to the Church of Satan. The 1980s saw a “Satanic Panic” in the form of abuse charges brought against child-care workers and suburban parents. Today, the author joins a group of Satanists for afternoon tea at the church’s global headquarters in a “bland New York college town.”

Meet the people decomposing on a body farm.

What prompts a woman to exit society and marry God? Inside a modern convent in Texas.