While accused killer Robert Durst was in Galveston, he made a few friends besides Morris Black.

There are two roles to play in the new world of on-demand everything: royalty or servant.

A mayday call in the critical moments after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.

The shooting death of the last wild Passenger Pigeon, atomic energy, mastodon watering holes, and other footnotes in Ohio history.

Alaska brims with stories of people who vanish and are given up for dead. Once in a while, the dead return.

Three days, 64 people shot, six of them dead: Memorial Day weekend in Chicago.

A Marxist archaeologist uncovers traces of fugitive slave settlements deep in the Great Dismal Swamp.

Learning to live in Earth’s coldest conditions.

John Franzese Jr. helped send his father, notorious Colombo family mobster Sonny Franzese, to prison. Then he turned up in Indianapolis.

How the tiny town of Roundup, Montana became a hub in Amazon’s supply chain.

Filipino teachers, hired to fill historic shortages in the South and elsewhere, fight their exploitation by opportunistic recruiters.

On Michael Jackson’s talent.

A report from the campaign trail.

A history of food poisoning.

100 miles, 24 hours.

A work trip to Turkmenistan.

The challenges of growing up in the modern world as the reincarnation of a famous Tibetan lama.

“What transpired in the streets appeared to be a kind of municipal version of shock and awe.”

Exploring the relationship between cats and the Internet in Japan.

Behind the tabloid story of the “murder orphan” in Queens.

Revisiting a 30-year-old beating death in St. Louis.

Spending time with the Tonya Harding Fan Club in the wake of the assault on Nancy Kerrigan.

A visit with Ai Weiwei, Laura Poitras, and Jacob Appelbaum, three people who live in justifiable paranoia of government surveillance.

In Guyana after the Jonestown massacre, with the survivors and the dead.

June 4, 1974: the first and last 10-cent beer night in Cleveland Indians history.