The country has become repressive in a way that it has not been since the Cultural Revolution. What does its darkening political climate—and growing belligerence—mean for the United States?

An investigation into how “Mr. Putin, a student of martial arts, had turned two institutions at the core of American democracy — political campaigns and independent media — to his own ends.”

At the age of 20, Christopher Knight parked his car on a remote trail in Maine and walked away. He had no plan. He had no tools. And he survived alone for 27 years.

Young people who leave strict Jewish communities face a bewildering, lonely new world. One group helps them navigate it.

How did an obscure artist who survived the Cultural Revolution become a viral sensation and suddenly the surreal, sexy center of Fashion Week?

After decades at the fringe, conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones helped usher a president into office. Now, the only person standing in Jones’ way is Jones.

The U.S. has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world. The story of a neonatal nurse helps illustrate why.

How a loving daughter and star student stole barium acetate from her high school chemistry lab, put it in her father’s refried beans, and almost got away with murder.

Stephen Miller, the 31-year-old White House advisor, became steeped in white nationalism in the unlikeliest of places: a Santa Monica high school and Duke University.

A rash of building fires in San Francisco has many speculating that the fault lies with landlords hoping to oust their poor tenants. One anonymous landlord describes his failed plan to do exactly that.

On coming to see your home country the way the rest of the world does.

“I learned about sex in a Laundromat. The setting wasn’t my idea. It was my mother’s who had brought me along on washday to break the news.”

Liz Waite and Kersheral Jessup couldn’t afford a higher education, let alone rent. But they worked and scrounged and slept on couches to put themselves through school. Will their degrees be worth it?

Some players, from the start, were up front about admitting it was a hoax. Others insisted, to their graves, that the story was true, that the Lutz family had been haunted by something. It’s just that the something may not have been paranormal at all.

When confronted with reports that a doctor to top gymnasts was sexually abusing women and girls, most did nothing. And the abuse continued.

When rescuers found Nathan Carman after seven days at sea, his mother had vanished without a trace. Did he kill her — and, years earlier, another member of his family?

A Ugandan bill that would threaten homosexuals with imprisonment, or in some cases death, has its roots in the shadowy American evangelical group known as The Family.

In the 1980s, Billy Ray Bates, once dubbed “the Legend,” drank himself out of the NBA and ended up playing in the Philippines. For a few wild years, his legend grew—both on the court and in the bars.

The story of the 100-mile Barkley Marathons.

“As a young reporter in Eastern Europe in 2001, I expected to witness the ‘end of history’ and the flowering of democracy. That was just one of the mistakes I made.”

Doug Schifter waged a one-man campaign to stop Uber from putting his fellow black-car drivers out of business. Then he decided to take his own life.

In America’s deadliest big city, the task of announcing each new murder falls to police spokesman T. J. Smith. One year ago, he confronted a killing like no other.

Pinned down in deep snow and running out of food, veteran thru-hiker Stephen “Otter” Olshansky scraped his way to a campground latrine, holed up inside, and prayed for help to arrive.

“We need a new language for talking about poverty. ‘Nobody who works should be poor,’ we say. That’s not good enough. Nobody in America should be poor, period.”

Christopher Daniels’ political beliefs got him in trouble. Though the FBI won’t comment, he is likely the first person ever imprisoned for being a “black identity extremist.”