“For hours, days, I fixated on the patch of sunlight cast against my wall through those barred and grated windows. When, after five weeks, my knees buckled and I fell to the ground utterly broken, sobbing and rocking to the beat of my heart, it was the patch of sunlight that brought me back.”

“Some companies are beginning to allow women to take their management-training courses. A woman sitting in on an executive conference is less of a shock to the male than she was only a few years ago. A few big companies–R.C.A., the Home Life Insurance Co., and the New York Central, for example–have even ushered women into the board room.”

Ah yes, you should also know that most of your colleagues are some of the biggest neurotics in the country, so you might as well get used right now to the way they're gonna be writing you five and ten page single spaced inflammatory letters reviling you for knocking some group that they have proved is the next Stones.

In Austin in 1973, politicos and hippies could get together and create violent, visionary horror films for $60,000. So they did. The story of how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre got made.

The apparatus of counterinsurgency and occupation has funneled billions of dollars into Afghanistan, and much of it has ended up in the hands of insurgents. For those who have profited—be it through aid, extortion, corruption or legitimate business—there is very little incentive to bring the conflict to an end.

A woman is accused of lying about being raped. Years later and several states away, the story changed.

No one really knows the script for days like these, and neither did we.

A dispatch from the early days of AIDS:

It is as relentless as leukemia, as contagious as hepatitis, and its cause has eluded researchers for more than two years.

An art museum in Tasmania is saving the local economy. It also offers an “eternity membership” which, for $75,000, will see your ashes displayed there once you’ve gone.

In 1995, the Chicago Reader profiled a little-known professor (and lawyer and philanthropist and author) who had decided to run for office to get back to his true passion: community organizing.

Seventeen years after taking the iconic “Afghan Girl” photograph for National Geographic, Steve McCurry went back to find her.

A former prostitute and pregnant at 14, Lillie was a foster child looking for a home. A nurse and already a mother of 5, Amy wanted to help. Then Lillie and her newborn moved in.

Six months after playing an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, a rambling Dylan holds forth on style, songwriting, and fame. “People have one great blessing—obscurity—and not really too many people are thankful for it.”

Purdue Pharma’s marketing materials say OxyContin works for 12 hours. It doesn’t. And this problem, long-denied by the drugmaker, is what makes it highly addictive.

“In some ways fame is gratifying, but you have to be very careful of what you wish for because you just might get it.”

A conversation with Lucinda Chambers shortly after she was fired from British Vogue, where she had been fashion editor for the last 25 years.

“We must be grateful for the smallest of blessings. Last week I saw and heard some things that provided a measure of hope and nuance in these grim and hysterical times.”

For more than 20 years, Judith Sheindlin has dominated daytime ratings—by making justice in a complicated world look easy.

“I found it both freeing and disturbing to spend time on a platform that didn’t ask me to pretend that I was on the Internet for a good reason.”

“This is the remarkable, true story of a rich white male celebrity who abused his power and then apologized for it.”

Shut out of the employment market in their 20s, hikkomori shut-ins continue to search for direction in middle age.