“That learning to cook could lead an American woman to success of any kind would have seemed utterly implausible in 1949; that it is so thoroughly plausible 60 years later owes everything to Julia Child’s legacy.”

In 1987, a terrible accident kills five Ole Miss sorority members. The author catches up with her Chi Omega sisters who survived.

On the last weekend of April 2011, two things happened in Washington D.C.: the annual White House Correspondents Dinner and the decision to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound. This is the story of how both transpired.

A history of the divide between computing and language, and why we “define and regiment our lives, including our social lives and our perceptions of our selves, in ways that are conducive to what a computer can ‘understand.’”

Bill Ferguson does not believe his son, Ryan, killed a popular newspaper editor. To prove it, he’s drained his savings, performed public re-enactments of the crime, and alienated almost everyone in his Missouri city.

Darren Lumar lived in mansions he didn’t own, ran companies that didn’t make a dime, went to colleges that didn’t exist and slept with “any number of women” despite being married to James Brown’s daughter. When he was murdered, the cops had a problem: too many possible suspects.

In the late 90s, an American man adopted a 5-year-old from the Ukraine. A decade later, one of the two would be accused of molesting young boys. The other would be charged with murder.

On Enrique of Malacca, “the closest thing there is to a hero in the story of Ferdinand Magellan’s horribly botched attempt to circumnavigate the world.”

Last summer, Gia Allemand took her own life in a New Orleans apartment complex. The first person on the scene was her boyfriend, NBA star Ryan Anderson. This is the story of how he survived.

Nancy and Frank Howard were happily married for three decades. Then he fell in love with another woman, embezzled $30 million, and hired a parade of inept hit men to kill his wife.

Nearly 50 years ago, a penniless monk arrived in Manhattan, where he began to build an unrivaled community of followers—and a reputation for sexual abuse.

As the most famous helicopter news pilot in American history, Bob Tur prided himself on being the ultimate alpha male. Except all along, he knew he wasn’t.

You can have a PhD from Yale. You can be a rising star in the State Department. And you can still find yourself being investigated by the FBI for espionage.

An art museum in Tasmania is saving the local economy. It also offers an “eternity membership” which, for $75,000, will see your ashes displayed there once you’ve gone.

After robbing two video stores with a friend, Rene Lima-Marin was sentenced to almost 100 years in prison. Then, due to a clerical error, he was released 88 years too early.

He went from a viral pop hit to an arrest for conspiracy to murder charges in just under six months. Was Bobby Shmurda “too real” for his label?

An inside look at how an ad agency sells a car in 2015.

An oral history of Industrial Lights & Magic, which gave birth to Star Wars and countless films, as well as playing a hand in the creation of Photoshop and Pixar.

Jeff Mailhot, convicted serial killer, has joined several infamous criminals in a second career from behind bars: paid artist. His first piece? An outline of his left hand, available for $34.99.

In 1995, the Chicago Reader profiled a little-known professor (and lawyer and philanthropist and author) who had decided to run for office to get back to his true passion: community organizing.

Two Paths for the Future of Text: Steven Berlin Johnson’s lecture on “commonplace” books in which great 17th and 18th century thinkers compiled their browsing, and what it means for journalism today.

Kevin Fulton, a spy planted in the IRA, thought he was dead when he faced interrogation by a notorious IRA enforcer. But, it turned out, the enforcer was also an agent. How British intelligence undermined the IRA.

A utopian German settlement in Chile had already turned darkly cultish by the time it became a secret torture site for enemies of the Pinochet regime.

Bill Conradt, a well-known prosecutor, never arrived at the house in Murphy, Texas, where police and a crew from NBC’s To Catch a Predator were waiting. So the crew, along with a SWAT team, went to Conradt.