The activists, politicians, and social trends that led to 2012’s gay marriage victories.

On high school basketball star Chris Tang and the pressures of being the “Great Yellow Hope.”

How a group of serial entrepreneurs with an already impressive string of hits changed the way the world talks.

The rise and fall of Colorado’s newly-legal cash crop.

The White House’s unprecedented crackdown on reporters.

The fight to vaccinate children in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of an attempt to eradicate polio worldwide.

On being the lone male student at a women’s college.

How Thomas Drake, senior executive at the NSA, came to face some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen.

On why we need to stop questioning Wikipedia and start thinking about what comes next.

Part one of W.T. Snead’s Victorian-era investigation into child prostitution.

Miriam Carey died at the hands of the Secret Service. Over a year later, her family has no real answers about what happened to her.

Why do all those rugged coastlines, moors and stone buildings make England seem haunted?

He was the world’s foremost collector of presidential memorabilia, an outsider with a pathological need to fit in. He was also a thief.

The rise and fall of the Internet mogul.

A profile of “not just the toughest but the most corrupt and abusive sheriff in America.”

Muhammad Ali and his followers were the greatest show on earth. Then the show ended, and life went on.

Seized passports, debtor’s prison, and slave labor prop up a Disneyland in the desert now in decline.

The head of the Social Security Administration’s secret life as a respected poet.

In the last decade, newsrooms across the country have adopted a “do more with less” strategy. It’s a kamikaze mission.

What happened to the minds behind Napster, Gnutella, WinAmp, and BitTorrent after their creations irrevocably changed business and culture.

A report from Minnesota’s Angle Township, which was put in the U.S. instead of Canada by a map-maker’s error.

Putin, Medvedev, and how the Russian security agency FSB became the “new nobility.”

On the group of friends who came to rule the bizarre, decreasingly lucrative world of Internet porn.

On Arielle Holmes, a burgeoning actress who was, literally, plucked from the streets.

Maurice Lerner missed his shot at the majors and landed in the Rhode Island mafia.