A private investigator asks a magazine to write a puff piece on his business. The journalist finds a real story.

What happened when the U.S. Military decided to take its lead from America’s biggest brands.

What it means to be an entrepreneur in Argentina, where economic crashes are a way of life.

When the greatest players in the world go head-to-head, things can get downright angsty.

On the fascination, from Hollywood to Atlanta, with zombies.

The case for why a cup of joe is about to become a luxury item.

A portrait of three high school kids in Arizona forced to live on their own after SB 1070.

Alarmingly sophisticated imitations of American currency have turned up all over the world and the false-paper trail leads to North Korea.

How prison changed the mother and militant who was sentenced to 75 years for her role in a deadly 1981 Brinks truck heist.

As mainstream news loses its relevance, Allred becomes only more relevant to mainstream news. She’s provided thousands of hours of titillating material that has helped keep cable networks from grinding to a halt. The players come and go. Past clients like Amber Frey and Tiger Woods Mistress No. 1 Rachel Uchitel slip back into obscurity. Scott Peterson rots disregarded on death row in San Quentin, and Woods’s sexual escapades no longer mesmerize. But Allred retains her significance. There are always new victims to premiere and promote, new serial sexual harassers or psychopaths to square off against. In this spectacle of scandal, grisly murder, and celebrity wrongdoing, Allred has made herself the stage manager, the content provider, the indispensable performer.

Why “Father of Botox” Arnold Klein, whose famous clients once included Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor, thinks everyone’s out to get him.

Exploring the relationship between authors and their parents.

It mattered to her that she could have, or might have, been a writer, and perhaps it mattered to me more than I fully understood. She watched my books appear with considerable interest, and wrote me an oddly formal letter about the style of each one, but she was, I knew, also uneasy about my novels. She found them too slow and sad and oddly personal. She was careful not to say too much about this, except once when she felt that I had described her and things which had happened to her too obviously and too openly. That time she said that she might indeed soon write her own book. She made a book sound like a weapon.

Two Houston performance artists faux-marry an oak. Controversy ensues about the live installation’s relationship to the gay marriage debate.

Twenty five years after a shooting left him “100% disabled,” a Baltimore police officer continues to fight for his life.

“My name is Jackie and I am addicted to waitressing.” An essay on waiting tables.

A profile of the singer as he returns to the stage for the first time in a dozen years.

A profile of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was sentenced to 50 years today after being convicted of committing crimes against humanity.

The bizarre story of the disappearance of “downtown legend” John Lurie after a former friend resolved to take his life.

Three men are exonerated, almost 40 years after a 12-year-old’s coerced testimony led to their murder convictions.

The short-lived literary career of Breece DʼJ Pancake and his roadmap to a world of oppressive poverty.

Immune systems don’t make for clean narratives, even as we expect them to keep us pure.

We are all going to die. So what does it look like?

Can a company best known for explaining Kanye West lyrics and telling Warren Buffett to do unseemly things actually annotate the world?

The dilemma of providing quality health care for undocumented immigrants, and how one city is attempting to solve it.