How the illegitimate son of Liberian ex-President (and accused cannibal) Charles Taylor went from being a small time Florida hoodlum to one of Africa’s most notorious killers.

Jay-Z on his new book Decoded, his parents’ record collection, and the real reason rappers have a tendency to grab their junk on stage.

“Twenty-two years after being sent to prison for an unspeakable crime he did not commit, Calvin Willis walked out a free man, the 138th American exonerated by DNA evidence. He has won his freedom, yes, but how does a falsely accused man reclaim his life?”

The Wikileaks-released documents regarding the polonium-poisoning assassination of Alexander V. Litvinenko speak to the potential involvement of both British and Russian security agencies and hint at the disappearance of a plane that bore evidence of the transport of polonium.

How the relationship between favela-based drug gangs and elite police units tasked with fighting them came to define Rio de Janeiro.

On the expanding community of American parents who believe, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that there is a link between routine vaccinations and autism.

The Top Gun effect; how Hollywood became a factory for sequels, comic book and video game adaptations, and anything else easily marketed to under-25-year-old males.

Five years ago, Mel Gibson was one of Hollywood’s few genuine family-men and a leading box office attraction; inside his wild descent from star to pariah.

Fourteen people connected to resistance of Vladimir Putin have died on British soil. Every case has been closed, the deaths deemed of natural causes. American intelligence believes they were all assassinated by the Kremlin.

A son’s love letter to his sick mom.

Humanity has 30 years to find out.

Their boss allegedly committed sexual assault and abuse. He denied everything. They had to decide: Who do I believe? What do I do?

Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.

His rise to the top of the Billboard charts coincides with a list of criminal charges, including domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment, and aggravated battery of a pregnant woman.

Arthur and Kathleen Breitman thought they held the secret to building a new decentralized utopia. On the way, they plunged into a new kind of hell.

Successful SoundCloud rapper. Genre-bending artist. You may or may not know Post Malone. Here are some little-known facts that will help you get to know him.

These Boston high school valedictorians set off to change the world. But good grades only got them so far. Is Boston failing its brightest students? A five-part series about the students left behind.

A social and financial divide is forming—between those who have student debt, and those who do not—that will have ramifications for decades to come.

Caleb Cain was a college dropout looking for direction. He turned to YouTube, where he was pulled into a world filled with conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism.

How the CIA used a fake science fiction film to sneak six Americans out of revolutionary Iran. The declassified story that became Ben Affleck’s Argo.

A giant earthquake is coming to the Northwest. Unfortunately, no one knows when.

Border Patrol agent Matthew Bowen had been investigated for years before he used his 4,000-pound truck to assault a fleeing migrant.

From the proto-bleep to meta-bleep: how the US government protects us from the profane.

It was one of the most arresting viral photos of the year: a horde of climbers clogged atop Mount Everest. But it only begins to capture the deadly realities of what transpired that day at 29,000 feet.

Carrying babies for foreign couples was once touted as a win-win for everyone involved. Indian women, however, were often left with little to show for their efforts.