On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman entered the University of Texas at Austin’s Main Building. Armed with a number of rifles, he proceeded to kill 14 people and wound 32. Among them was a pregnant Claire Wilson.

An investigation into how “Mr. Putin, a student of martial arts, had turned two institutions at the core of American democracy — political campaigns and independent media — to his own ends.”

Against all odds, it really was a refuge of competence, normalcy and transcendent play. But the outside world has a way of sneaking in.

How a network of evangelical Christian crisis pregnancy centers turned the complex reality behind black abortion rates into a single, fictional story.

“It’s just beyond our experience—we have nothing in our evolutionary history that prepares us or primes us, no intellectual architecture, to try and grasp the remoteness of those odds.”

Jeffrey Holliman was deep in debt and out of options. So he took to the woods outside his small East Texas town. Then he started taking from his neighbors.

A profile of jailed trader Tom Hayes, who was either behind the Libor scandal or became its fall guy.

Lily gets ready for her first date.

In 1976, newly appointed Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens voted to reinstate capital punishment in the United States. Thirty years later, he argued that it’s unconstitutional. Here, he explains why he changed his mind.

On London’s new squad of “super-recognizers.”

A recent episode of This American Life was put together by reporters from Pro Publica based on this original reporting about the bubble-profiteering hedge fund Magnetar.

Developed by early computer engineers in their spare time, improved in University comp-sci labs, and ultimately sold in coffeeshops for ten cents per game. Inside one of the most influential games ever played.

A profile of "L.A.'s most adventurous eater," restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, who died Saturday.

Previously: a 2012 interview with Gold in The Believer.

When a group of Black mothers in Ohio were told to wait for school integration, they started marching every day in protest. They kept going for nearly 18 months.

On Stewart Butterfield, the founder of Flickr and now Slack, a wildly popular, difficult-to-describe messaging service that has 38,000 paying subscribers just a few months after launching.

“If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long.”

Depending on who you ask, Mohammed Jawad was either 12 or 17 when he was detained. Nobody disputes that he spent seven years at Guantánamo before he was exonerated. The story of a boy who grew up as a detainee.

Darren Lumar lived in mansions he didn’t own, ran companies that didn’t make a dime, went to colleges that didn’t exist and slept with “any number of women” despite being married to James Brown’s daughter. When he was murdered, the cops had a problem: too many possible suspects.

A discovery in a Lithuanian forest brings a tale of survival back to life.

A profile of Missy Elliott.

Headlines have portrayed Australia’s bucket-list destination as dead, or dying. But that’s an oversimplification of a complex story—and the most dire threat from tourism may be what you least expect.