The history of a Japanese archipelago and its inhabitants, through rebellions and famine, a 20th century exodus for prostitution work across Asia, and finally depopulation and isolation.

A polygamist clan descended from four original families, the Order are believed to run the largest organized crime operation in Utah. When a chest full of gold disappeared, suspicion immediately fell on a group of boys who had split with the cult.

An attempt to make sense of the dog meat industry in Vietnam, an unregulated maze of black market slaughterhouses, home restaurants, and thieves who are often murdered in the open when caught stealing the family pet.

The life story of Travis the chimp and the family of tow truck operators who raised him like a human child before it all ended in tragedy.

As the country’s population ages and shrinks, there’s increasing demand for services that clean out and dispose of the property of the dead.

When the Great Depression put Plennie Wingo’s bustling Abilene cafe out of business, he tried to find fame, fortune, and a sense of meaning the only way he knew how: by embarking on an audacious trip around the world on foot. In reverse.

On the early NBA days of the league’s newest champion.

Pregnant and facing decades in prison, the mother of Tupac Shakur fought for her life—and triumphed—in the trial of the Panther 21.

In early 2012, the bones of a woman and young boy were found near the Arizona-Mexico border. The author investigates who they were and how they died.

How Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, with a little help from the Bush Administration, got 140 trees chopped down in a national park to improve his view and ruined the life of a park ranger in the process.

Walter Pitts, who helped develop the “first mechanistic theory of the mind,” was so brilliant he was once been invited to study with Bertrand Russell. He was also homeless.

On Brent White, the joke whisperer who edits the largely improvisational comedies of Paul Feig, Judd Apatow and Adam McKay.

In nine hours, Guinea-Bissau’s President and military leader were assassinated in separate incidents. Their dealings had turned the country into the runway of choice for drug smugglers and Hezbollah.

The holdings of the Seattle Art Museum are historically male-dominated. When Matthew Offenbacher won a prize for his own art, he decided to use it to beef up their queer and female holdings.

The writer returns to his remote North Dakota hometown’s high school, then isolated with a graduating class of only 28, now even smaller but connected by the internet.

Thinking about the right thing to do, now and in the imaginable future.

A U.S. Marine’s journey from the Afghan war to an Illinois prison.

By choice, for less than $2 an hour, the female inmate firefighters of California work their bodies to the breaking point. Sometimes they even risk their lives.

In 1865, a failed stockbroker tries to pull off one of the boldest financial schemes in American history: the original big short.

Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal—only to find their country in an identity crisis. What will the third century of the faith look like?

Companies are figuring out how to balance what appears to be a lasting shift toward remote work with the value of the physical workplace.

It started with a candle in an abandoned warehouse. It ended with temperatures above 3,000 degrees and the men of the Worcester Fire Department in a fight for their lives.

Gregg Bemis is an 87-year-old retired venture capitalist who owns the salvage rights to the Lusitania. He’s determined to prove an alternate theory as to why the ship was attacked in 1915. Unfortunately, the Irish government isn’t so into his plan.

These Boston high school valedictorians set off to change the world. But good grades only got them so far. Is Boston failing its brightest students? A five-part series about the students left behind.