As the most famous helicopter news pilot in American history, Bob Tur prided himself on being the ultimate alpha male. Except all along, he knew he wasn’t.

You can have a PhD from Yale. You can be a rising star in the State Department. And you can still find yourself being investigated by the FBI for espionage.

An art museum in Tasmania is saving the local economy. It also offers an “eternity membership” which, for $75,000, will see your ashes displayed there once you’ve gone.

An inside look at how an ad agency sells a car in 2015.

Jeff Mailhot, convicted serial killer, has joined several infamous criminals in a second career from behind bars: paid artist. His first piece? An outline of his left hand, available for $34.99.

Two Paths for the Future of Text: Steven Berlin Johnson’s lecture on “commonplace” books in which great 17th and 18th century thinkers compiled their browsing, and what it means for journalism today.

Kevin Fulton, a spy planted in the IRA, thought he was dead when he faced interrogation by a notorious IRA enforcer. But, it turned out, the enforcer was also an agent. How British intelligence undermined the IRA.

A utopian German settlement in Chile had already turned darkly cultish by the time it became a secret torture site for enemies of the Pinochet regime.

How the actor ended up with a house full of tourniquets and syringes, an unflinching belief in the restorative powers of “ozone,” and the brain scan of someone who has “experienced the equivalent of blunt trauma.”

It is agreed that the 1977 political murder of a couple in Johannesburg was a political killing that covered up mysterious Swiss Bank deposits. Various reports implicate Cuban Nationalists, Italian Fascists and the CIA.

Soap operas, enrollment in multiple graduate programs at once, student films alongside Hollywood blockbusters. Is James Franco’s entire career a piece of performance art?

“For years, the most profitable industry in America has been one that doesn’t design, build, or sell a single tangible thing.” The case for why investment banking is socially useless.

The criminologist/lawyer who created Perry Mason unravels the Boston Strangler case, in which eleven women were murdered by an assailant they willingly let into their homes.

How Zion, Ill., a fundamentalist Christian settlement with a population of 6,250, created one of the most popular stations in the country during the early days of radio.

A profile of the late Jack LaLanne, “the greatest gym teacher of all time,” who was as responsible as anyone for America’s fitness craze in the latter half of the 20th century.

On the pair of entrepreneurs behind a Wal-Mart of weed in Oakland. The duo is talking IPO. “Everybody I was meeting was a little bit older, more a part of the hippie generation,” says one. “I was like, ‘I bet there’s so much room for innovation and new ideas.’”

A profile of Jack Dorsey, co-founder (and displaced CEO) of Twitter. Dorsey’s latest venture, a mobile credit card system called Square that only officially launched in February 2011, already processes more than a million transactions per day.

On who will bear the burden of the financial crisis facing cities across America. “Will it be articulated in terms of bond defaults or larger kindergarten classes—or no kindergarten classes at all?”

Thirteen years ago, Chris Velten disappeared while retracing the travels of explorer Mungo Park in Africa. He hadn’t been heard from at all — until he sent a friend request.

An East German weightlifter ingested more anabolic steroids than any other athlete in recorded history. It didn’t end well.

She has convinced her followers she is a pretty-in-pink naïf, an escort, an unhinged ex, an office drone, and, most recently, an expectant mother. None of it is real.

A journey through Venezuela, once the richest country in South America, but now collapsing under the weight of the world’s highest rates of inflation and violent crime.

The country has become repressive in a way that it has not been since the Cultural Revolution. What does its darkening political climate—and growing belligerence—mean for the United States?

At the age of 20, Christopher Knight parked his car on a remote trail in Maine and walked away. He had no plan. He had no tools. And he survived alone for 27 years.

After decades at the fringe, conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones helped usher a president into office. Now, the only person standing in Jones’ way is Jones.