A gay freshman at Rutgers, a spying roommate, and the trial that followed.

The decades-long saga of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife.

Part 1 • Part 2

How a Mexican drug cartel makes its billions.

The false promise and double standard of integration in the Obama era.

The rise and fall of the “most far-flung, most organized, and most brazen example of homosexual extortion in the nation’s history.”

“When I died, I died of many things: the failing systems; the weakening of age; the exhaustion of the long war against dying. Finally, I succumbed to the lack of ethics in a California hospital, killed by filth and neglect.”

The insanity of U.S. gun law.

“Reg Smythe was the greatest British newspaper strip cartoonist of the 20th Century—and second only to Peanuts’ Charles Schulz on a global scale. So why don’t we treat him that way?”

How the U.S. lost out on iPhone work.

As a 15-year runaway hitchhiker, the writer was nearly killed by a trucker. Twenty seven years later, she investigates whether her attacker was truck stop serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades.

“If you think cam girls—those flirty naked characters that plague porn site pop-up ads—are raking in easy money, you’re right. If you think cam girls are bleakly stripping online out of desperation, you’re also right.”

Eight women remember their first time.

Sex and status disclosure in the age of Grindr and undetectable HIV-levels.

Iran’s sex-obsessed old guard reacts to a state where “the majority of the population is young.… Young people by nature are horny. Because they are horny, they like to watch satellite channels where there are films or programs they can jerk off to.… We have to do something about satellite television to keep society free from this horny jerk-off situation.”

Sex in the Olympic Village.

The first in-depth piece on Michele Bachmann.

A profile of Romney from his last presidential campaign, with a focus on how he evolved from professional consultant to professional candidate.

On the calculated political career of Rick Perry, and what it means for his presidential bid.

Notes from the Nevada stretch of the Ron Paul campaign trail last time around.

A look at Jon Hunstman, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China now running well behind in the polls, as he prepared to announce his candidacy.

An exhaustive profile of Gingrich, then a 41-year-old congressman balancing a new role on the national stage with the spotlight on his personal life that came with it.

A profile of Rick Santorum published as he began a reelection campaign for the U.S. Senate, a race widely considered a stepping stone to a run for the White House. Santorum went on to lose.

A primer on long-shot candidate Herman Cain, former pizza chain CEO and current Tea Party star.

On the rapid rise of the New Jersey governor, who doubles as pundits’ favorite noncandidate.