Arthur and Kathleen Breitman thought they held the secret to building a new decentralized utopia. On the way, they plunged into a new kind of hell.

How the CIA used a fake science fiction film to sneak six Americans out of revolutionary Iran. The declassified story that became Ben Affleck’s Argo.

Last year, a hacker gave Glenn Greenwald a trove of damning messages between Brazil’s leaders. Some suspected the Russians. The truth was far less boring.

A writer tries to understand his dad through the space race.

On affirmative action at the University of Texas, the essence of privilege, and getting what you deserve.

This job—writing college essays for Abigail Fishers—was the only job I have ever been truly ashamed of, and I am so ashamed of it now that it hurts.

An oral history of a family in Mexico City, in transition from poverty to the lower-middle class, as they scramble to organize the burial of a slum-dwelling aunt.

The life story of Rick Rescorla: immigrant, war hero, husband, and head of security at Morgan Stanley/Dean Witter, occupant of 22 floors in the South Tower on September 11, 2001.

In 2019, President Trump pardoned Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance, who was serving a 20-year sentence for ordering the murder of two Afghan civilians.

To Lorance’s defenders, the act was long overdue. To members of his platoon, it was a gross miscarriage of justice.

The story of Tim Danielson, one of America’s top high school distance runners, who went on to murder his ex-wife.

Parking garages, prisons, freeways and the world of stuff we’re not supposed to look at.

How Bernardo Provenzano, “boss of all bosses of the Sicilian Mafia” and fugitive for more than 40 years, got caught.

On the reality TV empire of Thom Beers, creator of Deadliest Catch.

Rethinking Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

A story of endurance in the face of unimaginably brutal conditions.

A group of Long Island misfits with aspirations towards Satanic worship disappeared into the woods to take mescaline. One of them never came back.

Pitching a no-hitter in the middle of a multi-day acid bender was only one of Dock Ellis’ many amazing exploits.

Video-game designer Zoë Quinn in the aftermath of Gamergate, an act of web harassment with world-altering implications.

A case of mistaken identity leads to the prosecution of an ordinary Eritrean for human smuggling.

“In all his life, this was the moment of his greatest defeat.” On the death of George McGovern’s daughter on a cold winter night in Madison, Wisconsin.

Barbara Williamson co-founded Sandstone, one of the most famous radical experiments in group sex and communal living of the 1970s. Then she got wild.

In the face of death threats, a forensic anthropologist has spent two decades exhuming the victims of a “dirty” civil war. Now his work might help bring justice for their murders.

On September 11, 2001, three out of every four people who worked for Howard Lutnick died. The story of a recovery.

On video game collectors’ “holy grail” – a Nintendo World Championships cartridge:

Wired.com tracked down some of the Nintendo World Championships participants and serious videogame collectors whose lives have touched by these coveted artifacts of a bygone 8-bit era. Here are their stories.