For years, Joshua Milton Blahyi, better known as General Butt Naked, was one of Liberia’s most feared warlords. Then he became a pastor. Today he visits the families of his victims to seek forgiveness for his sins.

Saad Mohseni, Afghanistan’s first media mogul and a business partner of Rupert Murdoch, produces everything from nightly news broadcasts to the controversial Afghan version of American Idol.

A 2009 profile of the guy behind 4chan, Christoper “moot” Poole, his anonymous army of millions, and how it’s all losing him money.

For decades, thousands of people came to Trinidad, Colorado, to have gender confirmation surgery done by Dr. Stanley Biber. This excerpt from Going To Trinidad tells his—and one of his patient’s—poignant stories.

How “Count” Victor Lustig, one of America’s great con men, worked his scams.

How the author’s father wrote over 400 pieces of “pirate porn, ghost porn, science-fiction porn, vampire porn, historical porn, time-travel porn, secret-agent porn, thriller porn, zombie porn and Atlantis porn.”

On solitary confinement:

"Two or three hundred years from now people will look back on this lockdown mania like we look back on the burning of witches."

My mother’s eyes traced what was happening with happiness of a child. When she asked my father how it was possible, he thought she was asking about the flowers, but she wasn’t. She was asking how it was possible to see this much beauty at once.

Can casting away from established society to inhabit sea-based colonies save us from the problems of modern life—or are we bound to repeat our mistakes?

After 9/11, U.S. authorities used informants to secure hundreds of terror convictions. But did they help create plots where none existed?

Mattathias Rath made a fortune selling cure-all vitamins in Europe before moving his business to South Africa, where he launched a massive campaign against retroviral AIDS medications and in favor of his own vitamin cocktails. When scientists, AIDS non-profits, and even Medecins San Frontieres objected, he sued.

The Tunnel Creek avalanche, five years later.

It’s been 14 years since Bryan Pata was shot to death just after football practice. He was months away from the NFL Draft. His killer is still free.

At 22, he single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI.

In Harpersville, Alabama, a traffic violation can lead to months in jail and a never-ending stint in a work-release program – what some refer to as a modern-day debtors’ prison.

Kelli Stapleton, whose teenage daughter was autistic and prone to violent rages, had come to fear for her life. So she made a decision that perhaps only she could justify.

Terrorists boarded two planes in Boston and flew them into the World Trade Center. Massachusetts zeroed in on its top airport official, who has never quite recovered.

Paul was in his 80s when someone called to say she was his daughter, conceived in a fertility clinic with his sperm. The only problem? He’d never donated any.

Your local police department probably has a $400,00 device that listens in on cellphones. Soon your neighbor will be able to buy the same thing for $1,500.

“There was no they.' There was not even a 'he,' no armed person turning on a crowd. But what happened at JFK last night was, in every respect but the violence, a mass shooting.”

Around the world, governments and corporations are in a race for code that can protect, spy, and destroy—hacks some secretive startups are more than happy to sell.

How Niki Nakayama’s kaiseki restaurant became a highly coveted reservation in L.A.

For years, JaMarcus Crews tried to get a new kidney, but corporate healthcare stood in the way. He needed dialysis to stay alive. He couldn’t miss a session, not even during a pandemic.

While the virus has ravaged rich nations, reported death rates in poorer ones remain relatively low. What probing this epidemiological mystery can tell us about global health.