“Political argument has been having a terrible century. Instead of arguing, everyone from next-door neighbors to members of Congress has got used to doing the I.R.L. equivalent of posting to the comments section: serially fulminating.”

Over the past 15 years, three people have attempted to restore the humor brand to its former glory. What happened instead was direct-to-video movies, lawsuits, crippling debt, and two prison sentences.

The Nxivm initiation was supposed to open up a secret sisterhood. After giving up compromising photographs to the recruiter “master,” each woman was expecting a tattoo. Instead they received 2-inch brands that seemed to suggest the initials of the cults founder, Keith Raniere.

I cannot burden my family with worry, because to be a burden worse than not being family at all. Like everyone else, I came to the ballpark to get away from something.

“Like they said in Step Brothers: Never lose your dinosaur. This is the ultimate example of a person never losing his dinosaur. Meaning that even as I grew in cultural awareness and respect and was put higher in the class system in some way for being this musician, I never lost my dinosaur.”

On Marie-Madeline Marguerite, a 1600s French serial killer.

The full text of a 20,000-word ebook on the interpreters who worked alongside American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their fates once they were no longer of service.

When I hear music as a fan, I see fields. I see landscapes. I close my eyes and see an entire universe that that music and the voice, or the narrative, create. A music video-and any other kind of visual reference-is created by someone else. For me, as a music fan, visuals kind of steal away the purity of the song.

Today, in the electronic age of instantaneous communication, I believe that our survival, and at the very least our comfort and happiness, is predicated on understanding the nature of our new environment, because unlike previous environmental changes, the electric media constitute a total and near-instantaneous transformation of culture, values and attitudes.

Decades after the body of beauty queen Irene Garza was pulled from an irrigation canal, there is still only one suspect: John Feit, the priest who heard her final confession.

“The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account.”

The life and times of two professional muggers in 1970’s lower Manhattan:

Hector and Louise usually work whatever neighborhood they’re living in. They knock over every old man on the block, every young man who follows Louise’s swinging hips and pocketbook, and every young girl attracted by Hector’s olive eyes. They rough up all of them, take whatever money is there, and then move on.

How the heir to the Hart wrestling dynasty burned every bridge from Canada to Mexico.

A profile of Nora Sandigo, guardian to hundreds of kids born in America to illegal immigrants.

A couple tries to give away their house in Flint, Michigan – but no one wants to live there anymore.

A 30-year-old funeral director in LA wants to help the living get closer to death.

The theme-park chain where kids learn to pilot a plane, pay taxes, and pretend to be adults.

Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas, want to tell your children what to learn in school.

A white gangster immerses himself in Asian culture to lead a Chinatown gang. He even learns to pour tea correctly.

In 1992, a magazine story introduced the world to the photographs of Sally Mann. Here, she responds to the firestorm that article produced.

In 2003, Gary Coleman ran for governor of California. But what he really wanted was to have never come to Hollywood in the first place.

A voyage to North Sentinel island, home to one of the last entirely isolated populations on Earth.

A profile of Anas Aremeyaw, an investigative journalist in Ghana who’s willing to do anything–and pose as anyone–to get the story.

For mountaineers, it’s not enough just to get to the top—it’s how you get there that matters.