Race relations at the gigantic and soul-crushing Smithfield slaughterhouse, where annual turnover is 100 percent: 5,000 people are hired, 5,000 quit.

The Mosul Dam is failing. A breach would cause a masssive wave that could kill as many as a million and a half people.

How six different people live off six different, and wildly varying, incomes.

How a bootleg prep school profited by ripping off teens with NBA dreams.

A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next.

On February 10, 1982, Lucy Dixon’s daughter was raped. Against all odds, she and her family brought the man to justice.

The author recounts playing herself – best-selling author Sloane Crosley – on an episode of “Gossip Girl.”

An ode to professional basketball players and why pro ball is the best ball of all.

In the early 1960s, Middle Eastern guys in Brooklyn introduced America to Arabic rock-and-roll.

An investigation into the crash of the USS Fitzgerald.

The disgraced movie mogul finally faces his day in court. But as his accusers know best, there might not be a Hollywood ending.

A war travelogue through Mali alongside French troops as a “place just like Afghanistan” descends into chaos.

Less than half a decade after The Hills brought them massive celebrity, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are broke and his living in his parent’s vacation house. Their onscreen relationship was mostly fake, but the reality, as their current situation attests, was far worse:

By the end of 2009 (and the show’s fifth season), their lives seemed insane. Instead of riding bikes, Spencer was holding guns. Heidi’s plastic surgeries gave her a distorted quality, but she vowed to have more. Spencer grew a thick beard, became obsessed with crystals, and was eventually told to leave the series. There were daily updates on gossip sites about them “living in squalor,” publicly feuding with their families, and attacking The Hills producers (or claiming The Hills producers attacked them). By the time they announced they were (fake) splitting, followed by Spencer threatening to release various sex tapes, and Heidi (fake) filing for divorce, it seemed like they had ventured into, at best,Joaquin Phoenix-like, life-as-performance-art notoriety and, at worst, truly bleakStar 80 territory that could end with one or both of them dead.

A father’s life, one year after the death of his three daughters in a fire.

How misdirected incentives in the bewildering medical supply industry keep innovative, life-saving equipment from reaching hospitals.

The fever-dream life and death of Chinese poet Gu Cheng.

How a burst blood vessel transformed the mind of a deliberate, controlled chiropractor into that of an utterly unfiltered, massively prolific artist.

A travelogue through the contradiction-rich and predominantly Muslim Southern Thailand.

“Incels” are going under the knife to reshape their faces, and their dating prospects.

Decades of greed, neglect, corruption, and bad politics led to last year’s Paradise fire, the worst in California history.