Leland Yee was a career San Francisco politician known for championing open government and gun control. For the last few years, he was also the main target of an elaborate undercover investigation, during which he traded political favors for cash, tried to sell $2 million worth of weapons to a medical marijuana kingpin and worked closely with well-known Chinatown gangster named Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.

What a soldier finds in combat.

A social and financial divide is forming—between those who have student debt, and those who do not—that will have ramifications for decades to come.

A prolific fundraiser and dean at St. John’s University, Cecilia Chang was also accused of murdering her husband and had connections to organized crime. Two days after she was convicted of stealing more than $1 million from the schoool, she took her own life.

The downfall of a Goldman Sachs director:

"Now from, for the last three or four, I mean four or five years, I've given him a million bucks a year, right?" says Rajaratnam. "Yeah, yeah," says Gupta, who doesn't appear taken aback at all by Rajaratnam's next remark: "After taxes. Offshore. Cash."

The artist discusses her latest record, Biophilia, science and music education. 

Up until she developed a vocal-cord nodule a few years ago, Björk made a point of not investigating how that instrument worked. “With arrangements and lyrics,” she says, squinting over her coffee, “I work more with the left side of my brain. But my voice has always been very right brain. I didn’t try to analyze it at all. I didn’t even know until I started all this voice work, two years ago, what my range was. I didn’t want to let the academic side into that—I worried the mystery would go.”

PLAYBOY: Is it possible you set a lower value on privacy than most people do?

DENTON: I don't think people give a fuck, actually.

Just days after suffering a concussion, a 17-year-old fullback hangs himself. Inside his family’s journey to learn if a brain injury is to blame.

At Nancy Reagan’s memorial, Hillary Clinton praised her fellow former first lady for “starting a national conversation” about AIDS. That is not how everyone remembers it.

The private grief of Samaria Rice, twenty months after her son Tamir was killed.

To understand why a 64-year-old man would try and break the land speed record by traveling hundreds of miles per hour, you need to know a little something about his family.

A dispatch from Donetsk.

The controversial history of WI-38, a cell strain created from an aborted fetus “that has arguably helped to save more lives than any other created by researchers.”

A small-town coffeeshop owner led a double life as a blogger and podcaster on the topic of “pickup artistry.” Then his identity, and his intimate writings about his experiences with 46 local women, was made public.

Far too many county jail inmates are dying from suicide, a cause of death critics say can be prevented with reasonable health care services. The problem? Private correctional health care firms may have a goal other than providing adequate care.

Welcome to World of Wonder, the Hollywood production company that celebrates “outsiders, 16th-minute celebrities, conspiracy theorists, penis puppeteers, dictators, street hustlers, porn stars, hackers, homicidal club kids, gender deviants, furries, plushies, and Tori Spelling.”

An essay on craft, excerpted from Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities.

A reporter’s memories from a half-century of covering business.

How the “genial Bavarian” version of Adolf Hitler became a global media celebrity, “a plain-living gentleman with a soft spot for dogs and children.”

A profile of Paul Reubens and his subversive alter ego.

"When I was younger, someone took a knife to my clitoris and cut out a small but significant part of me. I blamed my mother. I despised her. I loved her."

A story of truth, lies, and an American addiction.

Reflections on two seasons of loss.

A college student accused a powerful man of rape. Then she became a suspect.