How a meteorite hunter’s obsession took him from the mountains of Colorado, to the Bundy Ranch, and eventually landed him in jail.

Our climate models could be missing something big.

Wandering a Detroit reduced to “crackhouses and churches” with “outlaw biker Jesus” Pastor Steve.

A eulogy for a movement.

Hanging out with a new celebrity class: the teen kings and queens of social media.

On Ferguson, Cosby, and what ‘racial progress’ really means.

The hard life and overlooked brilliance of Zane Campbell.

A childhood spent with the oboe.

An interview with the singer.

Trying to make sense of a fragmented, disparate musical tradition.

“Howard Stern’s a bad motherfucker, man..if I had to be on six hours a day, it would be just as nasty and foul and not sophisticated. The fact that you’re going to see me do an hour every four years? Reduce Howard Stern to an hour every four years, you’d have the most brilliant comedian who ever lived. It’s not even close.”

At Nancy Reagan’s memorial, Hillary Clinton praised her fellow former first lady for “starting a national conversation” about AIDS. That is not how everyone remembers it.

The postscript of a viral hit.

“Neil Young is crankier than a hermit being stung by bees. He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook. He hates Apple. He hates Steve Jobs. He hates what digital technology is doing to music.”

The roots musician is inspired by the evolving legacy of the black string band.

There is someone whose job it is to try to extract royalty money from anyone who plays music in a place of business. Most people do not react well to this request.

A CD plant employee ushered in the modern era of music piracy by teaming up with a shadowy “Scene” crew on IRC chat.

Searching for home at a cowboy poetry convention in Elko, Nevada.

"Imagine a great hall of fetishes where whatever you felt like fucking or being fucked by, however often your tastes might change, no matter what hardware or harnesses were required, you could open the gates and have at it on a comfy mattress at any time of day. That’s what the internet has become for music fans. Plus bleacher seats for a cheering section."

One day you’re teaching yourself to play the piano in hotel lobbies, the next you’re contributing a song to a David Lynch soundtrack.

"Here’s God’s truth about it: being a groupie wasn’t about sex, it was about access. I wanted to live in the stage life, dazzled by color and sound, constantly in motion, driven by excitement and power, loved by the stage lights, part of the story."

" I really think that for us, who all grew up listening primarily to recorded music, we tend to forget that until about 120 years ago ephemeral experience was the only one people had. I remember reading about a huge fan of Beethoven who lived to the age of 86 [in the era before recordings], and the great triumph of his life was that he’d managed to hear the Fifth Symphony six times. That’s pretty amazing. They would have been spread over many years, so there would have been no way of reliably comparing those performances."

An in-depth history of the most important pop innovation of the last 20 years, from Cher’s “Believe” to Kanye West to Migos.