In anonymous warehouses in Detroit, Goldman Sachs has hoarded a quarter of the world’s supply of aluminum, placing them firmly in control of trading on the London Metal Exchange.

A interview with David Mitchell, author of the recent The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Cloud Atlas, on stretching a fictional universe across multiple novels and centuries of real history.

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

The case of Gilberto Valle, “The Cannibal Cop,” and the line between criminal thoughts and action.

The story of the 1969 murder spree by Charles Manson and “Family” as told by those close to the case.

The rise of the long-haul trucker/serial killer, as excerpted from Ginger Strand’s book Killer on the Road.

The untold story of the world’s most infamous sex tape, and how the Internet spread it faster than anyone expected.

Inside the twisted, half-conscious world of Jure Robic, the Slovene soldier who might be the world’s best ultra-endurance athlete.

Inside the minds of two people, one with the world’s best memory and one with the world’s worst.

The shooting death of the last wild Passenger Pigeon, atomic energy, mastodon watering holes, and other footnotes in Ohio history.

On the utter brutality of life in the tent cities, one year after the earthquake.

On the outsized pleasures of the very small.

At age 22, the author went undercover at his old high school. An excerpt of the book that became the film.

The roots musician is inspired by the evolving legacy of the black string band.

A speech on the value of being alone with your thoughts, delivered to the plebe class at West Point.

Daisy Coleman, new to town and a cheerleader, was 14. Matthew Barnett, a 17-year-old football player and the grandson of a longtime politician, was 17. The evidence pointed overwhelmingly toward rape. There was even a video. Yet the charges were dropped. Then the people of Maryville, Missouri, set about running the Colemans out of town.

When Randy Lanier sped to Rookie of the Year honors at the 1986 Indianapolis 500, few knew his racing credentials, let alone his status as one of the nation’s most prolific drug runners, smuggling in tons of marijuana when he wasn’t on the track. Now, after 27 years in prison, Lanier is looking to the road ahead.

“Choice is a great burden. The call to invent one’s life, and to do it continuously, can sound unendurable. Totalitarian regimes aim to stamp out the possibility of choice, but what aspiring autocrats do is promise to relieve one of the need to choose. This is the promise of “Make America Great Again”—it conjures the allure of an imaginary past in which one was free not to choose.”

On spear-wielding chimps who hunt for meat.

Following Muammar Qaddafi’s death in 2011, Libya had hundreds of billions of dollars. This is the story of how it was erased.

The shrinking of the country’s ice sheet is triggering feedback loops that accelerate the global crisis.

The long, happy, surprising life of 77-year old Donald Gary Triplett, the first person ever diagnosed with autism.

Kevin is the only surviving Von Erich brother, born into a wrestling family that lived and died by the code of the ring.