A profile of Erykah Badu.

A profile of MF Doom.

As surely as 2008 was made possible by black people’s long fight to be publicly American, it was also made possible by those same Americans’ long fight to be publicly black. That latter fight belongs especially to one man, as does the sight of a first family bearing an African name. Barack Obama is the president. But it’s Malcolm X’s America.

The hunt for rare 1933 Double Eagle coins:

The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the nation’s currency, has been pursuing them for nearly 70 years, through 13 Administrations and 12 different directors. The investigation has spanned three continents and involved some of the most famous coin collectors in the world, a confidential informant, a playboy king, and a sting operation at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. It has inspired two novels, two nonfiction books, and a television documentary. And much of it has centered around a coin dealer, dead since 1990, whose shop is still open in South Philadelphia, run by his 82-year-old daughter.

A profile of the internet’s poet, Patricia Lockwood.

A digressive consideration of the popular new show.

Tracking the circuitous fall of a Chinese political star.

On the murder of Jam Master Jay.

A profile of Mark Zuckerberg, savvy CEO.

Visiting a semi-secret LGBTQ commune in the middle of Tennessee.

Fake news stories. Doctored photographs. Staged TV clips. Armies of paid trolls.

On motherhood, writing, and the death of a friend.

On the past, present, and future of gossip.

A profile of the rapper and activist.

The privately funded effort in danger of falling down.

In Guyana after the Jonestown massacre, with the survivors and the dead.

The inside story of the first homicide in America’s most secure prison.

“For the first few days after the surgery, it was difficult to separate out my newly implanted sense from the bits of pain and sensation created by the trauma of having the magnet jammed in my finger.”

A minute by minute account of the officers and first responders on the scene of the San Bernadino shooting and the subsequent firefight between police and and the Farooks.

The story of a naïve fisherman, a boat headed for Spain and 1.5 tons of cocaine.

How a group of serial entrepreneurs with an already impressive string of hits changed the way the world talks.

The Granite Mountain Hotshots, an outfit of professional wildland firefighters, had 20 members. On June 30, 19 of them lost their lives.

The rise and fall of Colorado’s newly-legal cash crop.

A profile of driver A.J. Foyt on the eve of what was supposed to be his final Indy 500.

Part one of W.T. Snead’s Victorian-era investigation into child prostitution.