On the anger that led to the Watts Riots of 1965, the mistakes made during those six days in August, and how little changed afterward.

Established media companies used to sue YouTube. Now they’re betting on it.

Elon Musk’s dreams of colonizing Mars.

On the seminal songwriter, who died four years ago today, in his final days before succumbing to dipsomania.

The story of John Laroche, which led to Orleans’ The Orchid Thief, and tangentially, the film Adaptation.

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

A torrid phone sex affair begins with a random call in a motel and ends a year later with a face-to-face meeting.

Each year, thousands of people pay to play eighteen holes of golf at Angola, “the largest maximum-security prison in the country.”

Trevell Coleman wasn’t sure whether he’d killed a man. But after 17 years, he needed to find out.

The story of a rookie clinging to his dream, as told by his uncle.

Baseball legend Lenny Dykstra’s on-field brilliance and private-life disasters, from drunk driving to failed investment and publishing ventures.

The activists, politicians, and social trends that led to 2012’s gay marriage victories.

A trip to CES, “what a World’s Fair might look like if brands were more important than countries.”

In search of the former boxing champ, who refuses to believe he has HIV.

The White House’s unprecedented crackdown on reporters.

A Hells Angel informant’s path from destruction to redemption and back, and a family’s trouble with witness protection.

The author dives to the wreck of the Mohawk, where his uncle died in 1935.

The stories of the 109 black men who have played quarterback in the NFL, from Fritz Pollard to Russell Wilson.

How Thomas Drake, senior executive at the NSA, came to face some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen.

On why we need to stop questioning Wikipedia and start thinking about what comes next.

A field trip to the video gamey world of the modern trader.

As the head of the CBF, Ricardo Teixera rules Brazilian futebol from the top down, controlling everything from the value of championships to broadcast rights. He needs the pull off a flawless 2014 World Cup in order to set the stage for being elected FIFA’s president, but there’s one hitch; the trail of bribes and scandals he has left in his wake.

Whenever you want him to go on the record, Teixeira shushes you and raises a finger to his lips.  He addresses men and women alike as “meu amor,” with an exaggerated Rio accent. “Meu amor, it’s all been said about me – that I smuggled goods in the Brazilian national team’s airplane, that there’s been dirty dealing in the World Cup, all those investigations into Nike and the CBF."

Translated from the original Portugese.

The anatomy of a 1930 epidemic that wasn’t:

Was parrot fever really something to worry about? Reading the newspaper, it was hard to say. “not contagious in man,” the Times announced. “Highly contagious,” the Washington Post said. Who knew? Nobody had ever heard of it before. It lurked in American homes. It came from afar. It was invisible. It might kill you. It made a very good story. In the late hours of January 8th, editors at the Los Angeles Times decided to put it on the front page: “two women and man in Annapolis believed to have 'parrot fever.'"

How a major American company helped bring Charles Taylor to power in Liberia.

Creating, and then attempting to dismantle, a fake persona based on a man who died in 1984.