When (temporary) cities swell; a short history of the Burning Man festival.

He used to weigh 1,000 pounds. Now he has to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

DNA evidence exonerated six convicted killers. So why do some of them recall the crime so clearly?

The town welcomed hundreds of Somali refugees. Then a private militia decided to go “ISIS hunting.”

“Watching the cells populate, it rapidly became clear that many of us had weathered more than we had been willing to admit to one another.”

An interview with Cobain a few months after the release of In Utero.

Last summer, Arthur Medici went surfing off the coast of Cape Cod. He never made it back.

Home-funeral guides believe that families can benefit from tending to—and spending time with—the bodies of their deceased.

Observers have long warned of rising forced labor in Xinjiang. Satellite images show factories built just steps away from cell blocks.

How did a lorry carrying 273 dead bodies end up stranded on the outskirts of Guadalajara?

In the West, organized extremists are driving community health officials out of their jobs.

Biden has a plan to make day care more affordable for parents—if the providers don’t go out of business first.

On a decade-long war:

Hackers from many countries have been exfiltrating—that is, stealing—intellectual property from American corporations and the U.S. government on a massive scale, and Chinese hackers are among the main culprits.

The Berkeley Pit is a gorgeous, toxic former mining site in Montana that’s beloved by tourists. But unless it’s cleaned up soon, it could become the worst environmental disaster in American history.

Another look at a popular myth.

For the longest time blues fans didn’t even know what their hero looked like—in 1971, a music magazine even hired a forensic artist to make a composite sketch based on various first-hand accounts—until two photos of Robert Johnson finally came to light.  The dapper young man pictured in the most famous photo, dressed in a stylish suit and smiling affably at the camera, hardly looks like a man who has sold his soul to Lucifer.

On a little-known statistic that tracks the movement of America’s population by searching for its balance point.

A legal battle over stolen computer monitors ends one man’s career and the lives of three others.

How a group of farmers came to believe that their relatives were returning from the grave.

Investigating San Francisco’s OneTaste, which promises personal and professional success through the practice of orgasmic meditation.

The story of a small Latvian counterfeiting business that got far too big for its own good.

A profile of Hank Williams III.

A profile of the best-selling author, self-help guru and convicted felon.