The inside story of the coup that has brought the world’s most feared terrorist network to the brink of collapse.

The story of how Michael Larson cracked the code of Press Your Luck, winning $104,950 in cash, a sailboat ($1,015), and two all-inclusive trips.

She was a young plutonium worker whose Honda Civic Hatchback ran off the road and smashed into the wall of a concrete culvert. In her trunk were manila folders full of documents, which immediately went missing.

The city of Cleveland is on the hook $18.7 million in judgements for police brutality. They have a plan to get out of paying. And if it works, cities across the country could starting using the same maneuver.

“At 54, after 30 years of marriage and two of loneliness, I went online to find a man and found Dean.”

A three-part essay on love, loss, and what comes in between.

Every time a bicyclist rides on an open road, we entrust their lives to a safety net of legal protection and basic human decency. That system has failed.

The scientists at Beyond Meat have concocted a plant-protein-based performance burger that delivers the juicy flavor and texture of beef with none of the dietary and environmental downsides.

A profile of “the seven-time defending UFC light-heavyweight champion, practically unbeatable, and already maybe the greatest fighter of all time.”

“Easy care” sheep, crushed piglets, and starving calves. These are the products of a remote research center where scientists are trying to re-engineer the farm animal to fit the needs of the 21st-century meat industry.

The U.S. is one of only two countries that don’t guarantee paid maternity leave. As a result, women across the country are rushing back to work after C-sections and losing their positions in order to take care of newborns.

The strange, gun-filled life of the “King of Instragram,” a failed NAVY Seal trainee turned poker-playing playboy with an exiled fraudster for a father and two heart attacks already under his belt.

Eight of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s victims remained a mystery, 35 years after his conviction. One man made it his mission to identify them.

A trip to the writers’ room of The Onion spinoff, which started as a BuzzFeed parody but has morphed into something else: “the institutional voice of the Internet.”

On Michael Lewis and the global financial crisis.

Previously: The Michael Lewis World Tour of Economic Collapse

How Viennese psychologist Ernest Dichter transformed advertising:

What makes soap interesting? Why choose one brand over another? Dichter’s first contract was with the Compton Advertising Agency, to help them sell Ivory soap. Market research typically involved asking shoppers questions like “Why do you use this brand of soap?” Or, more provocatively, “Why don’t you use this brand of soap?” Regarding such lines of inquiry as useless, Dichter instead conducted a hundred so-called “depth interviews”, or open-ended conversations, about his subjects’ most recent scrubbing experiences. The approach was not unlike therapy, with Dichter mining the responses for encoded, unconscious motives and desires. In the case of soap, he found that bathing was a ritual that afforded rare moments of personal indulgence, particularly before a romantic date (“You never can tell,” explained one woman). He discerned an erotic element to bathing, observing that “one of the few occasions when the puritanical American [is] allowed to caress himself or herself [is] while applying soap.” As for why customers picked a particular brand, Dichter concluded that it wasn’t exactly the smell or price or look or feel of the soap, but all that and something else besides—that is, the gestalt or “personality” of the soap.

On the French urban exploration group UX—”sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself.”

An oral history of Saturday Night Live.

Part of our guide to SNL for Slate.

On the Republican Party’s successful use of redistricting to “pass draconian anti-immigration laws, end integrated busing, drug-test welfare recipients and curb the ability of death-row inmates to challenge convictions based on racial bias.”

How the former U.N. weapon’s inspector and “loudest and most credible skeptic of the Bush administration’s contention that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction” ended up embroiled in an Internet sex scandal involving underage girls.

How a lonely, self-taught hacker found his way into the private emails of movie stars – and into the underworld of the celebrity-skin business.

Creators, gatekeepers, and the future of the comedy business.

A transcript of Oswalt’s keynote at last week’s Just For Laughs conference.

How two brothers, born of the same mother but adopted by different families, reunited and used a stolen $50k to fund a ride that started in New Jersey and ended with bullet-ridden cabins in the wilds of Alaska.