How Service Corporation International corporatized death, driving growth through everything from aggresive acquisitions, volume pricing on caskets and embalming fluid, a “strong flu season,” and pre-selling over $7.5 billion worth of burials.

How a self-taught doctor from Delhi cornered the black market in kidneys, building one of the world’s most lucrative organ-trading rings, until it all came crashing down.

“There is only one given: On the afternoon of August 16, a 22-year-old from Australia named Christopher Lane, who had come to America to go to college and play baseball, went out running and, without warning or knowing why, was shot to death in Duncan.”

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.

“Twenty-five years ago, I used to live in fear of Trevor Latham kicking my ass nearly every day. I grew up to be a writer. He grew up to run one of the toughest biker gangs in America. And then I tracked him down.”

“I never got the ‘I’ve never seen a black woman, let me touch your hair’ vibe, it was more just like, ‘Hi, attractive person, let’s do this.’”

When you’ve never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because the idea of peanut butter and jelly touching seems like too much, you turn to legendary chef Daniel Boulud for help.

A history of the women’s television channel and its push to employ female writers and directors long before it became an issue in Hollywood.

50onRed is a fixture in Philly’s startup world. But there’s something the leadership didn’t talk about, even with some of its own staff. They make malware.

“The patron saint of adult thumb-suckers is a 65-year-old Long Island salesman who looks strikingly like Hunter S. Thompson, down to the tinted aviator sunglasses and bald spot.”

Unraveling the case of a Canadian man suffering from schizophrenia, put on trial for murder in New York, but found not criminally responsible in Nova Scotia.

The Piano Man of Yarmouk fled the ruins of Damascus to a life of criss-crossing Germany playing songs about his old neighborhood to huge crowds. Because of refugee law, he is paid nothing.

When a wealthy businessman set out to divorce his wife, their fortune vanished. The quest to find it would reveal the depths of an offshore financial system bigger than the U.S. economy.

In 1991, Edwin Debrow shot and killed a cab driver on the east side of San Antonio. He was twelve years old. Twenty-five years later, he is still in prison. Is that justice? And is there room for mercy?

They are the most celebrated in the U.S. military. But hidden behind the heroic narratives is a darker, more troubling story of “revenge ops,” unjustified killings, mutilations, and other atrocities.

Why the future feels frozen in time, as framed by Marshall McLuhan (“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”) and William Gibson (“The future is already here; it is just unevenly distributed.”)

Aside from the wealthiest players, nine out of 10 NFL athletes are likely to be insolvent within 10 years of retirement. A new executive MBA program aims to change that.

In the not-so-distant future, all of our objects will talk to each other. They’ll make our coffee, find our keys, save our lives. The roadmap to a fully networked existence.

Montaous Walton couldn’t throw, catch or hit. But he wanted to be a ballplayer. And with the help of the internet, the media, and an ambitious young agent, that’s what he briefly became.

On “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez,who terrorized Los Angeles and San Francisco through a string of over 30 home invasion murders starting in 1984 and ending when he was recognized and apprehended by an angry mob.

When Germany legalized prostitution just over a decade ago, politicians hoped that it would create better conditions and more autonomy for sex workers. It hasn’t worked out that way.

Robert Aaron was a veteran horn player who sold bags of heroin to friends to support his own habit. Then his friend Philip Seymour Hoffman overdosed.

An informational interview during which the author is advised, “Find a rich husband, and then you can work at whatever you like on the side, and it doesn’t matter, because you already have money.”

In 1984, Jacqui met Bob Lambert at an animal-rights protest. They fell in love, had a son. Then Bob disappeared. It would take 25 years for Jacqui to learn that he had been working undercover.