What undercover investigators saw inside a factory farm.

To his friends and family, Ross Ulbricht was a compassionate, warm soul known for random acts of kindness. To the F.B.I., he was Dread Pirate Roberts, the mastermind behind the Silk Road who was willing to order hits to protect his black market operation.

Fred Wilpon, the owner of the hapless New York Mets, had more than $500 million tied up with Bernie Madoff when the Ponzi scheme was exposed. Now he may be forced to sell his beloved ballclub.

Yes, 311 helped solve the mysterious case of the maple syrup smell. But with the data from more than 100 million calls, it’s primed to explain far more.

Twenty-seven-year-old Mike Will Made It and the rise of the super-producer.

Twenty years after the world first heard about Christopher McCandless, fans of Into the Wild continue to risk their lives to reach the bus where he died.

A young man returns home from the army and gets a surprising offer from his emotionally distant father: Join the family business and help mom & pop pull off a string of daring cross-country heists. No one expects the betrayals coming.

“He has hit rock bottom, and he just hasn’t accepted it yet.” Basketball’s iconoclast is a broke recluse at 37.

“It took me 32 years to come out. This is what happened when I did.”

“What people need to know is we’re not protesting churches. We’re protesting this church.”

“Before Glenn Greenwald was the journalist who broke and defended the most important story of 2013, he was many other things: an underage South Florida politician, a lawyer at a high-powered corporate firm, Kips Bay’s most combative tenant, and even the legal arm of his business partner’s gay porn distribution company.”

He was just another coked-up agent (repping the likes of Steven Soderbergh) when he disappeared into Iraq, shooting heaps of footage he would attempt to package into a pro-war documentary. And that was just the beginning.

The body of a 38-year-old woman lay on her couch with the TV continuously running BBC for three years. Who was she, and why did it take three years for her to be discovered?

Mysterious, man-made “natural flavor” explains why most fast food—indeed, most of the food Americans eat—tastes the way it does. An early excerpt from Fast Food Nation.

Ten years ago, a pair of legendary TV executives decided it was time to change the formula for football broadcasting. One bet on Dennis Miller. The other bankrolled Vince McMahon and the XFL.

A profile of The Rock, the best friend you didn’t know you had.

The story of Dr. Sherman Hershfield, who became Dr. Rapp.

Sabika Sheikh, a Muslim exchange student from Pakistan with dreams of changing the world, struck up an unlikely friendship with an evangelical Christian girl. The two became inseparable—until the day a fellow student opened fire.

A closer look at the economics of Black pop culture reveals that most Black creators (outside music) come from middle-to-upper middle class backgrounds, while the Black poor are written about but rarely get the chance to speak for themselves.

“When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. I’m going to try to articulate that to you. And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but I hope what I say will be worthwhile and purposeful.”

At a high-profile Libertarian conference, everyone agrees government should be smaller, but what should replace it is much more contested.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

Pat Gallant-Charette is 68. She’s on a quest to beat marathon swimming’s globe-spanning challenge.

One writer travels to “La Serenissima” and finds that time is no match for Venice’s magic.

Kathy Phipps was “rescued” by FEMA. Ten years later, she is so anxious she’s confined to her house.