Amid the complex web of international trade, proving the authenticity of a product can be near-impossible. But one company is taking the search to the atomic level.

The Christian organization Teen Challenge, made up of more than a thousand centers, claims to reform troubled teens. But is its discipline more like abuse?

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

Alfred Anaya was a genius at installing secret compartments in cars. If they were used to smuggle drugs without his knowledge, he figured, that wasn’t his problem. He was wrong.

On an artist who’s spent nearly 50 years bending the rules of space and light, and his life’s work, an extinct volcano in Arizona where he has been developing a network of tunnels and underground rooms since 1974.

How Russia consistently undermines the U.N. in order to keep a multi-billion dollar monopoly on the sales of helicopters and airplanes.

On the dangerous state of U.K. banks—“an existential threat to British democracy, a more serious one than terrorism, either external or internal”—and how it can be fixed.

How a con man named James McCormick sold $38 million worth of phony bomb-detection devices to Iraqi authorities.

The strange saga of Gordon Todd Skinner, a psychedelic aficionado and government informant who is now serving time in prison for kidnapping and torturing his wife’s teenage lover.

Following the hunters and poachers, servers and saviors of the little-known pangolin—a scaly, endangered creature sold by the thousands on the black market.

How the Google co-founder, forced out of a leadership role in 2001, came back to run the company 10 years later.

On May 16, 1913, after he’d spent years earning a chance at American stardom, Canary Islander shortstop Alfredo Cabrera played his one and only Major League Baseball game.

Marion and Larry Pollard live in the suburbs. They have eight grandkids and a terrier named Bella. They can also expel demons and save your soul.

Bryan Goldberg’s site for women was widely mocked when it launched a year ago. Today it has 15 million readers per month and some of its harshest early critics are on the payroll.

He’s spent decades dodging the law. He’s escaped from jail twice by helicopter. He’s given millions to the poor. The story of how Vassilis Paleokostas, Greece’s most wanted man, became a folk hero.

Margaret Keane’s husband stole credit for her iconic paintings, basking in fame and fortune that should have been hers for years. Then she told a reporter the truth.

Ted Ngoy overcame poverty and escaped genocide, made a fortune off doughnuts and gambled it all away. Now he’s back on top, with hundreds of shops in California, but under attack from Dunkin’ Donuts.

How Tony Galeota went from mobbed-up teen on Long Island to legendary strip club manager in Miami to distraught prisoner in a Panamanian jail.

“For people who pay close attention to the state of American fiction, he has become a kind of superhero.”

In 1912, 300 miles deep on a trek into the uncharted Antarctic wilderness, Douglas Mawson lost most of his crew and supplies. The story of how he got back.

“The only thing I’m able to conclude after my trip here is that it’s incredibly difficult for a poor country to go about getting un-poor.”

During the last decade, more than 1,500 Americans died after accidentally taking too much of a drug renowned for its safety: acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol.

A profile of the policy wonk who shone the light and turned the tide on overseas tax havens.

Lauren spent six years of her childhood locked in a closet, starved and tortured by her birth mother and stepfather. Miraculously, she survived; that’s when her long road to recovery began.