On Taylor Swift’s passive-aggressive lyrics, the life of the writer, and the pain of middle school.

After Daniel Rigmaiden was arrested for a multi-million dollar fraud, he didn’t argue that he was innocent. He wasn’t. But he couldn’t understand how he had been caught. Rigmaiden had covered his tracks meticulously — the only way the cops could’ve found him, he realized, was through some secret tracking device that they had never disclosed to the public.

With The Apprentice, Trump rose to a level of popularity with minorities that the GOP could only dream of. Then he torched it all to prepare for a hard-right run at the presidency.

Richard Carr, a retired psychologist who had long dreamed of sailing around the world, was in the middle of the Pacific when he started sending frantic messages that said pirates were boarding his boat. Two thousand miles away in Los Angeles, his family woke up to a nightmare: he might be dying alone, and there was almost nothing they could do about it.

In the years before World War II, Zacharewicz shined at Cannes and was wooed by Samuel Goldwyn but when the Nazis occupied Poland, he was sent to Auschwitz for defending his Jewish countrymen: “For him, the choice was easy.”

Did A.Q. Khan sell nuclear secrets on the black market? The fame had unbalanced him. He was subjected to a degree of public acclaim rarely seen in the West—an extreme close to idol worship, which made him hungry for more. Money seems never to have been his obsession, but it did play a role.

In America's third oldest major city, a new sport has been born. It's called rustling cars. According to auto‑theft statis­tics, Newark has the highest rate of car theft per capita in the nation, more than forty cars each day. Sixty‑five percent of the thefts are perpetrated by teens and preteens, known hereabouts as the Doughnut Boys.

John Ackerman has spent millions procuring a majority of the known caves in Minnesota, which add up to dozens of miles of underground passageways and likely make him the largest cave owner in the U.S. He collects and charts them in the name of preservation, but his controversial methods have created many opponents.

Twenty years ago, Ramaphosa was by Mandela’s side as apartheid ended and in line to become deputy president. He didn’t get the job. Now one of the richest men in Africa, he’s finally getting the chance.

How Russia consistently undermines the U.N. in order to keep a multi-billion dollar monopoly on the sales of helicopters and airplanes.

Making the case that all Pixar movies exist on a cohesive timeline in the same universe dominated by a central theme: the battle between animals, humans and machines.

On the urge to live in a house you can't afford, the "acceptable lust" of American life.

He’s spent decades dodging the law. He’s escaped from jail twice by helicopter. He’s given millions to the poor. The story of how Vassilis Paleokostas, Greece’s most wanted man, became a folk hero.

Margaret Keane’s husband stole credit for her iconic paintings, basking in fame and fortune that should have been hers for years. Then she told a reporter the truth.

In 1943, a young research scientist found a cure for TB. It should have been the proudest moment of Albert Schatz’s life, but ever since he has watched, helpless, as his mentor got all the credit.

On the theft of 6 million pounds of maple syrup from Canada’s strategic reserve and the group of free market renegades who are fighting “The Maple Wars.”

On Benjamin Murmelstein, the head of the council of elders at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Why 85-year-old Jacques-André Istel established a town (population: 2) on 2,600 acres in the middle of the Arizona desert (but not before becoming a sky diving legend, among other things).

Passengers get a free ride. Drivers get a passport to the HOV lane. Nobody pays, nobody talks. On “slugging,” the DIY commuter system in D.C. that’s being used by 10,000 people a day and taking thousands of cars off the road.

All told, the military acknowledged this summer, 14 soldiers from the base have been charged or convicted in at least 11 slayings since 2005 — the largest killing spree involving soldiers at a single U.S. military installation in modern history.

You get steeped in this stuff as a kid, even if some part of you was always skeptical, it's hard to lose the residual sense that everything unfolding in the world—from natural disasters to commerce and geopolitics—signals some approaching doomsday.

The circus Roger Ailes created at Fox News made his network $900 million last year. But it may have lost him something more important: the next election.