The Michigan kidnapping case is a major test for the Biden administration’s commitment to fighting domestic terrorism—and a crucible for the fierce ideological divisions pulling the country apart.

How did a Kentucky entrepreneur, a Louisiana politician, and the vice president of Nigeria end up in one of the biggest scandals to hit America’s black elite in decades?

In 2006, seven men stole £53m. Six were caught, but more than half the money remains at large. On modern money laundering best practices.

To this day, no one (outside of the movie's own crew) knows how the Muppets rode bicycles in The Great Muppet Caper, the classic Henson movie from 1981. In that scene, Kermit stands up on one frog-leg on the seat of his bicycle to impress Miss Piggy, and then the whole gang joins them on their bikes, doing circles and figure eights, singing “Couldn’t We Ride?” It's a wonderful piece of filmmaking, and still a complete delight to watch because the effect relied on the ingenuity and bravado of the puppeteers and crew, not CGI wizardry. Contrast the joy and ebullience of this scene to the elegant chiaroscuro slickness of the post-Henson Muppet Christmas Carol in which we see old fogies Statler and Waldorf, as the Marley brothers, floating in mid air. No viewer is impressed; no one really thinks about it at all. And that's because when a then 29-year-old Brian Henson directed that film, he threw the rules out the window. Statler and Waldorf “float” because Goelz and Nelson, the men working the old guys, were standing behind them during filming and then were removed in post production. It’s an elegant fix—a cutting of the Gordian knot—but it is a complete break with an aesthetic 35 years in the making.

The American yam is not the food it says it is. How that came to be is a story of robbery, reinvention, and identity.

Why almost everything we think we know about the iconic photo from Robinson’s first game is wrong.

“This is a story about how the future gets weird.”

Is it time to end the mourning period for old media?

The island of Coiba off the coast of Panama is both a nature preserve and an open-air prison.

The juvenile ward on Rikers Island is a world of constant violence fueled by gangs and, allegedly, encouraged and overseen by the guards.

In Utah, an unlikely leader is looking to end the state’s land-use wars.

In the era of cord-cutting and mobile viewing, ESPN is at the crossroads.

San Francisco’s forgotten serial killer.

Is the genetically engineered chestnut tree an act of ecological restoration or a threat to wild forests?

The case against a notorious cat burglar, who is accused of stealing more than $12 million worth of the South’s finest sterling silver.

The prosecutor in the case of hacker turned F.B.I. informant (but still hacker) Albert Gonzales and his organization Shadowcrew : “The sheer extent of the human victimization caused by Gonzalez and his organization is unparalleled.”

Ricky Rodriguez was born in the role of the messiah. His father was David Berg, the leader of the polygamous/incestuous cult The Children of God, which published a book documenting his early life:

In 1982 a shop in Spain printed several thousand copies of a book that was then distributed to group members around the world. Bound in faux leather, illustrated with hundreds of photographs, the 762-page tome meticulously chronicled Ricky's young life and was intended as a child-rearing manual for families. Its title, The Story of Davidito, was stamped in gold. With its combination of earnest prose and unabashed child pornography, it is perhaps the most disturbing book ever published in the name of religion.

Eventually, he left the cult and found work as an electrician. But revenge called him back.

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.”)

The city of New York is suing a Long Island woman for making NYPD T-shirts. But is it really about money or controlling the brand?

The Wing is a private members’ space for women that claims to be an ‘accelerator’ for feminist revolution in the US – and now it’s coming to the UK. But how progressive is it really?

A profile of Christopher Soghoian whose “productions follow a similar pattern, a series of orchestrated events that lead to the public shaming of a large entity—Google, Facebook, the federal government—over transgressions that the 30-year-old technologist sees as unacceptable violations of privacy.”

On William H. McMasters, who ten days after being hired as Charles Ponzi’s publicist wrote a scathing exposé in The Boston Post that revealed the biggest fraud, at the time, in American history.

A dispatch from Vermont, which is in the midst of what the governor calls a “full-blown heroin crisis.”

A Little League season in Camden, New Jersey, where the murder rate is 17 times the national average.

How the ski town of the super-rich is responding to global warming.