A story of America in three scams.

Last August, contaminated water escaped from an abandoned mine in Colorado and traveled down the Animas River to Shiprock, the second-largest city in the Navajo Nation. Two weeks later, the EPA declared the sludge-filled river safe.

How companies and large temp agencies benefit from—and tacitly collaborate with—an underworld of labor brokers, known as “raiteros,” who charge workers fees, pushing their pay below minimum wage.

Rebecca Raffle came to Indianapolis from Los Angeles with dreams of building a cannabis empire. She introduced herself as a West Coast #girlboss, SEO ninja, LGBTQ Family, and avid baker. But she was altogether something different.

Over the course of 25 years, he’s repeatedly toyed with the idea of running for president and now, maybe, governor of New York. With all but his closest apostles finally tired of the charade, even the Donald himself has to ask, what’s the point? On the plane and by the pool with the man who will not be king.

Rumor had it that a teenager had cut off a man’s penis, and the cops happened to have a murder victim that answered that description. Nothing else lined up.

Three years ago, Seidel began to teach me how to play poker. Why on earth would a professional poker player—the professional poker player—agree to let a random journalist follow him around like an overeager toddler?

A profile of the “Oldboy” and “The Handmaiden” director.

The next generation of America’s most controversial (and likely most despised) church.

Over four months, a methane well in southern California’s Aliso Canyon leaked Lebanon’s equivalent of yearly emissions into the atmosphere. No one knows what the long-term effects will be.

Published across three consecutive issues and later adapted into the book (and mini-series) Generation Kill, the story of bullets, bombs and a Marine platoon at war in Iraq.

The director of a covert organization arrives for his first day at work.

After eight women are murdered in Louisiana, what was initially thought to be the work of a serial killer becomes something much more troubling.

In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year.

How a group of men with nicknames like “Emperor” and “Spear Carrier” tipped the balance in South Sudan’s fight for independence.

The inside story of how an ABC nature shoot in Africa end up producing  a snuff film.

How one of the world’s top conductors became ensnared in a WWI-era scandal.

Deana Lawson’s regal, loving, unburdened photographs imagine a world in which Black people are free from the distortions of history.

How online sales of highly regulated, super-toxic rodenticides exploit gaps in the law and imperil wildlife.

For Gangaram Mahes, Rikers Island was the only chance for three squares and a “decent life.” So Mahes committed the same crime 31 straight times: refusing to pay the check at New York City restaurants.

“My father didn’t believe in things that were a reminder of the past because he had never had things in the past, and, more important, he had never had a past—not a past that mattered, that should be passed on to me, his son.”

In the fall of 2015, Germany designated Sumte, population 102, as a sanctuary for nearly 800 refugees. What followed was a living experiment in the country’s principles.

On the lost pickup basketball games in D.C. between Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor, then both still in college, during the summer of 1957.

An essay on working at Sotheby’s.

Art pricing is not absolute magic; there are certain rules, which to an outsider can sound parodic. Paintings with red in them usually sell for more than paintings without red in them. Warhol’s women are worth more, on average, than Warhol’s men. The reason for this is a rhetorical question, asked in a smooth continental accent: “Who would want the face of some man on their wall?”

Olathe, Kansas, became a global magnet for tech talent, thanks to plentiful jobs, cheap housing, and good schools. Then someone opened fire on a pair of Indian-born engineers.