You walk around carrying this invisible weight — this pressure on your whole spirit—because the worlds you’re trying to fit into are rejecting you in so many ways. And you think it’s your fault.

“For much of my life, there was something about my mother I felt almost allergic to. As she approached death, for the first time I found I didn’t merely love her, I actually liked her.”

Conspiracy theories, utopian fantasies, and cult involvement surrounding the international standard of musical tuning.

Sixty years later, a dishonorably discharged World War I veteran makes one final appeal. The 1980 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

Stuck between the Taliban and the U.S. Military, Afghanistan’s farmers risk their lives both when they grow, and when they refuse to grow, fields of poppies.

One part rapist, one part con-man; the story of the seemingly unconvictable Hy Doan.

The story of dog-scent lineup innovator Keith Pikett and the not-so-scientific science behind forensics.

The author gets a security guard job at this aging textile factory. Part of the City by City project.

The photographs that Caesar, a Syrian military photographer, smuggled out of Assad’s death dungeons.

It’s the “City of the Big Automobile,” raw and beautiful at once.

From Stefani Joanne Germanotta to Lady Gaga: the self-invented, manufactured, accidental, totally on-purpose creation of the world’s biggest pop star.

The story of Nate Fleming—walk-on point guard at Oklahoma State, fan favorite, golden child—and the 2001 plane crash that took his life.

From the Greeks to George Lucas, 2,200 years of failure.

On the man who has turned the grunt work of packing into a social media phenomenon.

How two high school wrestling teammates ended up on opposites side of the law during Miami’s cocaine wars.

Mapping the global spread of antigay ideology.

Flashbacks from the life of Aaron Hernandez from the person who knew him best, his older brother Jonathan.

An Afghanistan love story.

How a 20-year-old from the land of fake news tricked Martina Navratilova, Serena Williams, and the BBC.

On photographer Garry Winogrand and the unedited archive of more than half a million exposures he left behind.

A love letter and the jacked up emotions of reality TV.

Most of the fish we eat die by asphyxiation. But there’s a better way, both for the fish and those who eat them.

A comprehensive history of the case against the Menendez brothers, built primarily on secret audio recording made by their self-promoting therapist.

Two well-liked Twitter employees accessed thousands of users’ private information and illegally passed it to the Saudi Royal Family, per the FBI.