As an “angry young man,” Ghost World author Daniel Clowes insulted Stan Lee and Art Spiegelman in a graphic novel’s satirical alternate reality. It was born from a nagging self-doubt that, despite the cartoonist’s current recognition and status, lingers.

When he disappeared four years ago on Turkey’s tallest mountain, Donald Mackenzie wasn’t trying to reach the summit. A true believer, Mackenzie was looking for Noah’s Ark.

A 15-year-old dies shortly after collapsing from heatstroke during a high school football practice. Was it has coach’s fault? The state thought so, and put him on trial.

Caleb Cain was a college dropout looking for direction. He turned to YouTube, where he was pulled into a world filled with conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism.

The Salesforce founder has donated a fortune to right capitalism’s wrongs, and he thinks his fellow billionaires should too. Why can’t we just be grateful?

Roger Stone, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Ben Shapiro—they’ve all made their way to the Sunshine State, fueling and profiting from a tabloid culture that turns politics into spectacle, arguably Florida’s greatest export.

In late 2018, Pittsburgh’s Jewish community was mourning the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Then a stranger and his family landed in their midst.

While on a string of tour dates opening for Radiohead, interaction between Mark Linkous’ antidepressants and the Rohypnol he took to sleep caused him to pass out. A hotel maid found him the next morning bent into a position where his legs had been cut off from circulation. When they untangled, built-up potassium shot from his lower body upward, triggering a harmful chain reaction that caused a heart attack and kidney failure.

In the basement of the White House, in an office with no windows, an MFA grad named Ben Rhodes is telling the story of America’s foreign policy.

The story of Attila Ambrus, who was released from jail this morning in Hungary. Nicknamed the Whiskey Robber because witnesses always spotted him having a double across the street prior to his heists, Ambrus only stole from state-owned banks and post offices, becoming a Hungarian folk hero during his seven years on the lam. While on his spree he was also the goaltender for Budapest’s best-known hockey team and was arguably the worst pro goalie ever to play the sport, once giving up 23 goals in a single game.

Excerpted from Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts.

The aftermath of a stranger’s death and the puzzle of psychosis.

The politics and rhetoric of Trevor Noah’s appointment as the new host of the Daily Show.

The musicians of Mali find themselves in the middle of a civil war.

A group of scientists started tracking thousands of British children born during one cold March week in 1946. Those children are now 65 and the data generated through careful tracking of their life history has become extremely valuable.

How mitigation specialists are changing the application of the death penalty:

In Texas, the most prominent mitigation strategist is a lawyer named Danalynn Recer, the executive director of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center. Based in Houston, GRACE has represented defendants in death-penalty cases since 2002. “The idea was to improve the way capital trials were done in Texas, to start an office that would bring the best practices from other places and put them to work here,” Recer said recently. “This is not some unknowable thing. This is not curing cancer. We know how to do this. It is possible to persuade a jury to value someone’s life.”

A political history of Britain.

In 1980, four American nuns were murdered in El Salvador. This is the story of how a young American official stationed there singlehandedly found the culprits.

Excerpted from Weakness and Deceit: America and El Salvador's Dirty War

The anatomy of a bungled, massively expensive undercover sting conducted by the Seattle Police Department.

The long arm of the DEA reaches into Liberia to bust a cocaine trafficker.

The taming of the political reporter.

Survivors of the real ‘Central Park Five’ attacker speak for the first time.

A week in the life of a family weathering the coronavirus.

“What happens when the thing that might save you is also the thing that might destroy the world?”

“Norbert Grupe—a Nazi soldier’s son, boxer, professional wrestler, failed actor, criminal, and miserable human being who was never so happy as when he could make someone hate him—was once a man so beautiful that other men wanted to paint him.”