One man’s dream to turn America into a post-prohibition wine utopia.

Who would poison the vines of the tiny, centuries-old vineyard that produces what most agree is Burgundy’s finest, rarest, and most expensive wine?

Fred Franzia makes a lot of money selling really cheap wine.

The rare-wine world gets conned.

Investigating whether or not anyone can really tell them apart.

A profile of wine critic Robert Parker.

On wine’s sacred and profane history.

The secret diary of Nina Simone.

The diary of a Scranton, PA National Guardsmen tasked with guarding the highest profile prisoner in U.S. history: a surprisingly amiable Saddam Hussein.

Is an ancient diary the key to discovering the origins of baseball?

The youngest prisoner held at Guantánamo on his seven years in detention.

Diary of a veteran gadfly.

On the last day of their junior year at Harvard, one roommate kills the other, then hangs herself.

The Spanish police believed he was a missing American teen. So, seemingly, did the Texas family who had lost him three years prior. Who they had actually found was Frédéric Bourdin, was a 23-year-old Frenchman on the run.

He was an 18-year-old Marine bound for Iraq. She was a high school senior in West Virginia. They grew intimate over IM. His dad started contacting her. No one was who they claimed to be.

For nearly a decade, Laura Albert lived a double life as troubled teen turned cult writer JT LeRoy, writing books, chatting constantly with celebrities, and convincing another woman to appear as JT LeRoy in public.

Jerry Joseph showed up in a small Texas town seemingly out of nowhere, produced a birth certificate that said he was of age, and quickly became a star for the local high-school basketball team. It was a role he’d played before.

The story of Alan Young, a career con whose go-to move was to pose as a member of the Temptations and smooth-talk his way into luxury hotel rooms and limo rides.

When a man named Clark Rockefeller snatched his daughter during a custody dispute, what the D.A. called “the longest con I’ve seen in my professional career” unraveled.

A profile of a young Dylan and the early ’60s folk scene.

”I don’t want anybody to be hung-up … especially over me, or anything I do.”

The making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville.

Ray Bowman and Billy Kirkpatrick, who began boosting together as teenagers, were arrested only twice during their prolific partnership. The first time was for stealing 38 records from a K-Mart in 1974. The second arrest came in 1997. In between, Bowman and Kirkpatrick robbed 27 banks, including the single biggest haul in United States history: $4,461,681 from the Seafirst Bank in suburban Tacoma.

Peggy Jo Tallas, a soft-spoken bachelorette, spent much of her adult life doing two things: taking care of her ailing mother and robbing bank after bank dressed as a pudgy, bearded cowboy.

Anthony Curcio was the pride of his small town in Washington state. A former football star, he had married his high-school sweetheart and was making good money flipping houses. Then the real estate market crashed, and Curcio turned his obsessive attention to planning an ingenious heist involving Craigslist, an inner tube, and $400,000.

The robbers had a helicopter, explosives, and inside information on a $150 million cash repository. But the police were on to them—sort of.

A young man named John Wojtowicz, desperate to provide for his children and finance his lover’s sex-change surgery, attempts to rob a Chase branch in Brooklyn. The bank is surrounded almost immediately and a 14-hour standoff ensues. The story inspired Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon.

In 2003, a man named Brian Wells robbed a bank in Erie, Pa., with a bomb around his neck. Shortly thereafter, with Wells surrounded by cops and claiming he’d been forced to commit the crime, the bomb detonated, leaving authorities to piece together who had put it there. Eight years later, they’re still not entirely sure who was behind this bizarre crime, or even the true motive.

How a 24-year-old nurse discovered Vegas, high-stakes gambling, and serial bank robbery.

“Hillary Clinton was never a shy person.”

Two biographies of Hillary Clinton do not get us any closer to understanding her.

On Clinton’s Arab Spring.

GROSS: I am just trying to clarify so I can understand.

CLINTON: No, I don't think you are trying to clarify. I think you're trying to say that, you know, I used to be opposed and now I'm in favor and I did it for political reasons. And that's just flat wrong. So let me just state what I feel like you are implying and repudiate it. I have a strong record. I have a great commitment to this issue and I am proud of what I've done and the progress we're making.

The drawbacks of being the front-runner.

There’s nothing simple about this candidacy—or candidate.

What the sensation of an uncontrollable itch can tell us about how the brain operates.

The shared life of Tatiana and Krista Hogan.

How some scientists are turning to connectomes—maps of the brain’s neural circuitry—to make the case for brain preservation, mind uploading, and eternal life.

Susie Mc­Kinnon cannot hold a grudge. She is unfamiliar with the feeling of regret and oblivious to aging. She has no core memories. And yet she knows who she is.

Is there really such a thing as brain death?

Eagleman, a neuroscientist, describes how groundbreaking advances in the science of brain have changed our understanding of volition in criminal acts, and may erode the underpinnings of our justice system.

Edna Kelly’s brain goes under the knife.

On the start of the high school football season in Odessa, Texas. An adaptation published alongside the release of Bissinger’s 1990 book of the same name, which led to the movie and the show.

Her suicide made headlines around the world after classmates were indicted on felony charges related to bullying, but the real story wasn’t that simple.

At age 22, the author went undercover at his old high school. An excerpt of the book that became the film.

Mr. Lindwall was the only high school teacher who understood him. Then Mr. Lindwall went to jail, and it was his turn to try to understand.

Sixteen years after graduating, an alumnus heads back to his old stomping grounds in Cleveland.

How two love-struck, type-A high school students almost got away with murder.

Navigating life as a brilliant teenage girl.

The profile of a 34-year-old woman named Charity Johnson who tricked people all over the country into believing she was still in high school.

An essay on a fatal car crash in the author’s youth.

The science behind why high school sucks.

Undercover at a dealership to learn the tricks of the trade, of which there are many.

Undercover in the online-shipping industry.

Undercover in a women’s insane asylum. On an island. In 1887.

Undercover as a Juggalette.

Undercover going through airport security.

Undercover with Afghanistan’s drug-smuggling border police.

Undercover in high school.

In 2007, Harrah’s made 5.6 percent of its total Las Vegas revenue off a single person: Terrance Watanabe.

A story of gambling addiction, in seven parts.

“On a small scale, Titanic Thompson is an American legend. I say on a small scale, because an overpowering majority of the public has never heard of him. That is the way Titanic likes it. He is a professional gambler. He has sometimes been called the gambler’s gambler.”

In 1980, a bankrupt gambler came up with a plan to get his money back. He built an incredibly complex bomb, one that was impossible to defuse and that only he knew how to move, and snuck it into a Lake Tahoe casino with an extortion note demanding $3 million. Part of the plan worked. Part of it did not.

How Billy Walters, the world’s most successful gambler, keeps winning.

On playing chess and waiting to get arrested.

“Again I ask, Is this really the way the American people want it to be?”

The men who say they’ll try to save the once-bustling gambling resort town.

An obsessive marine biologist gambles his savings, family, and sanity on a quest to be the first to capture a live giant squid.

A trip to a lobster festival leads to an examination of the culinary and ethical dimensions of cooking a live, possibly sentient, creature.

Stalking the disappearing bluefin tuna, the world’s most valuable wild animal.

A trip to Scotland and an investigation of enduring belief.

On the mysterious and moderately intelligent giant Pacific octopus.

A profile of a celebrity whale.

In 1992, a Chinese freighter tipped violently in a storm dumping a load of plastic floating infant toys—7,200 red beavers, 7,200 green frogs, 7,200 blue turtles, and 7,200 yellow ducks—to the open sea. This is their story.

In February 2010, a killer whale named Tilikum dragged his SeaWorld trainer into the pool and drowned her. It was the third time the orca had been involved in a death during his 27 years in captivity. This is his story.

The story of the loneliest whale in the world.

An essay on insomnia.

We know we need sleep. We just don’t know why.

Coming to grips with night terrors.

The state of sleep research and what Americans’ unprecedented lack of shuteye may mean in the long run.

On Ambien and the search for the next blockbuster insomnia drug.

A profile of a young Steve Prefontaine.

A 16-year-old runner, her coach and the lasting memory of an improbable race.

The strange case of Kip Litton, road race fraud.

On the world’s longest foot race, which takes place entirely within Queens.

He rose from poverty to fame as a marathon champion at only 23. But was his fall from a balcony outside of Nairobi murder, accident, or suicide?

A profile of 101-year-old marathoner Fauja Singh.

At age 17, Bonnie Richardson won the Texas state track team championship all by herself. Then she did it again.

In Mexico’s remote Copper Canyon, the Tarahumara Indians party hard, get by on a diet of carbs and beer, and can still run 100-mile races, even in their 60s.

His brain and body shattered in a horrible accident as a young boy, Bret Dunlap thought just being able to hold down a job, keep an apartment, and survive on his own added up to a good enough life. Then he discovered running.

If you walk into New York’s best restaurants without a reservation, what does it take to get a table?

David Chang’s manic quest for a flawless restaurant.

An essay on waiting tables.

An interview with Alan Stillman, who in 1965 founded T.G.I. Friday’s, the first singles bar in America.

Mysterious, man-made “natural flavor” explains why most fast food—indeed, most of the food Americans eat—tastes the way it does. An early excerpt from Fast Food Nation.

A minute-by-minute account of what it takes to run a restaurant.

America’s underground Chinese restaurant workers.

The creator of the California-based food chain kills his mother, sister and, finally, himself.

He was a nobody who became a porn star, a porn star who became a destitute freebaser, an addict who set up his dealer to be robbed, and finally witness to a retaliatory massacre at the house they called Wonderland.

Somehow, River Phoenix’s reluctance to be a star only made him more famous. When he died outside an LA club in 1993, it only cemented his troubled legend.

He came home from Vietnam, wrote the novel that became Full Metal Jacket, was nominated for an Oscar and riding high. Then he got thrown in jail for stockpiling stolen library books, started drinking, cut off his friends and fled to a remote Greek island. He never made it back.

Bonnie Lee Bakley always wanted to marry a celebrity. The one she chose was Robert Blake, a troubled and only intermittently famous man who would end up accused of her murder.

Peter Bart was once a movie executive like everyone else, but as the head of Variety, the industry’s powerful source of news,

How a high-powered lawyer and a rough-edged private detective ended up at the center of the biggest, dirtiest scandal in Hollywood history.

He was just another coked-up agent (representing the likes of Steven Soderbergh) when he disappeared into Iraq, shooting heaps of footage he would attempt to package into a pro-war documentary. And that was just the beginning.

Two years ago, the fitness guru abruptly disappeared from public life. His friends worry that he’s being held against his will inside his Hollywood Hills mansion, or something even worse.

Spending the summer as a tour guide on a glacier.

A trip to the Iditarod.

Following the Yukon Quest, the Iditarod’s thousand-mile rival.

Behind the scenes at the Yukon Quest.

On Alaska’s mushing dynasties.

A profile of the Michael Jordan of mushing.

The first modern games were staged in 1850 by a surgeon named William Penny Brookes in a town called Much Wenlock.

An American gold medalist in the hurdles describes his experience at the 1896 Olympics in Athens.

On the scene of the darkest games in Olympic history.

Three years after her gold-medal performance—and amidst rumors of a fall from grace—the author travels to Transylvania to track down gymnast Nadia Comaneci. He also enjoys several drinks with her coach, Béla Károlyi.

On the eve of the 1992 Summer Olympics, the Dream Team held a closed-door scrimmage in Monaco. Michael Jordan led one team, Magic Johnson the other. Two decades later, a game report.

How the media and law enforcement fingered the wrong man for the 1996 Olympic Park bombing.

Sex in the Olympic Village.

How science is “helping athletes approach perfection.”

How the government cleared the streets in advance of the 1988 Olympics.

“They cruise the city in chauffeured cars, blasting rap, selling pot to classmates. How some of New York’s richest kids joined forces with some of its poorest.”

Georgia and Patterson Inman, 15-year-old twins, are the only living heirs to the $1 billion Duke tobacco fortune. They are also emotional wrecks who have barely survived a hellacious childhood.

On the brother of the Sultan of Brunei, Prince Jefri Bolkiah, who has “probably gone through more cash than any other human being on earth.”

An overachiever on what he did and didn’t learn at Princeton.

A profile of Paris Hilton at the height of her fame.

An invite-only social network for Georgetown assholes.

How two sisters, heirs to the Bronfman fortune, may have blown $100 million supporting the cult-like group NXIVM.

A profile of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the Malibu-dwelling, “fantastically corrupt” dictator-in-waiting of Equatorial Guinea. Teodorin, as his friends call him, is considered by U.S. intelligence to be “an unstable, reckless idiot.”

After losing his sight at age 3, Michael May went on to become the first blind CIA agent, set a world record for downhill skiing and start a successful Silicon Valley company. Then he got the chance to see again.

One killer’s creepy obsession.

Daniel Kish had his eyes removed at age 1 because he was born with retinoblastoma, a cancer that attacks the retinas. But many people would never guess that he is blind.

The perspective-bending art of identical twins Trevor and Ryan Oakes.

Captain Iván Castro lost his vision in Iraq, but that didn’t stop him from running marathons.

The allure of invisibility.

How 3-D images affect the eye, plus proof that viewers have hated the technology since at least 1953.

How animals see.

On Timothy Treadwell, later immortalized in Grizzly Man, who lived and died by the bears of Alaska.

The life story of Travis the chimp and the family of tow truck operators who raised him like a human child before it all ended in tragedy.

The life story of Tilikum, a killer whale who dragged his SeaWorld trainer into the pool and drowned her in 2010. It was the third time the orca had been involved in a death during his 27 years in captivity.

Encountering a pack of wild dogs in Manhattan.

“Joe’s hand began to tingle, and he called the group together. The toxins would leave his system in 48 hours, he said. He’d be conscious the whole time.”

After two people are found dead in Yellowstone National Park, a team of investigators tracks down the unlikely culprit: a grizzly bear.

A profile of a previously unknown rookie pitcher for the Mets who dropped out of Harvard, made a spiritual quest to Tibet, and somewhere along the line figured out how to throw a baseball much, much faster than anyone else on Earth. Also, the greatest April Fools’ Day prank in the history of journalism.

Over six days in 1835, the New York Sun reported a stunning development—life had been found on the moon.

One of the most famous fabrications in journalism history, Janet Cooke’s Pulitzer-winning invention of an 8-year-old boy with a heroin habit.

See also: Bill Green’s 14,000-word post-mortem on “Jimmy’s World.”

Nearly 20 years after its publication, Cohn revealed that his story, which was the basis for Saturday Night Fever, was a fake—a fact that still isn’t noted on New York’s website.

The definitive profile of Stephen Glass, 25-year-old wunderkind reporter and serial fabricator.

See also: Sixteen years later, a former colleague confronts Glass.

The paper of record comes clean about Jayson Blair.

There is an island in the Florida Keys, the author said, where men fish for monkeys.

There was no island, no men, and no monkeys.

On the desolate career of Todd Marinovich, who was engineered from birth to be an NFL quarterback and ended up a junkie.

A detailed account of Plimpton’s 5-play tenure as quarterback of the Detroit Lions.

Jared Lorenzen was a star quarterback in college. He won a Super Bowl. And just like the author, he has spent his entire life fighting, and losing, a battle with his weight.

The stories of the 109 black men who have played quarterback in the NFL, from Fritz Pollard to Russell Wilson.

A profile of Eli Manning—brother of Peyton, son of Archie, future Super Bowl MVP—published shortly after his first NFL start.

Catching up with Jake Plummer, who turned down a $5 million contract and left the NFL while still in his prime to concentrate on playing handball.

A profile of Tim Tebow as he dealt with NFL skeptics on the eve of his final college season.

Over a scotch a few months after his underdog Jets won Super Bowl III, a 26-year-old Joe Namath told Jimmy Breslin what he’d done the night before the game: “I went out and got a bottle and grabbed this girl.”