Unregulated dams across Texas are increasingly failing—putting people and property in jeopardy.

How acute childhood trauma infects and compromises relationships later in life.

An American journalist on being kidnapped, tortured and released in Syria.

Becoming a priest in Boston amidst a sex abuse scandal and church closings.

How a substandard abortion provider stays in business.

A profile from his days living as a mountain monk in Southern California.

A home for troubled children in California comes undone.

Crooning with a once-notorious racist in
San Diego.

When you’re an American in a country that treats you as if you were not.

How it feels to lose $30,000 in Bitcoin.

How cops use arcane pedestrian laws to racially profile people in Jacksonville, Florida.

Life in a small town, six years after a school shooting.

An interview with James Baldwin on race in America.

In an instant it was gone.

Ex-members say it’s a cult preying on young creative women in New York. Its leader — a man who goes by International Scherick, compares himself to Jesus, and charges $200 minimum — says he’s empowering his clients to be successful in life and love.

Scott Storch, a producer who earned six figures for beats he made in less than an hour, was worth an estimated $70 million. Then he blew it all in a bizarre cocaine binge.

Sada Abe, a former geisha, became a sensation in 1930s Japan after erotically asphyxiating her married lover, cutting off his penis and testicles and carrying them in her kimono for days.

“Things don’t just flow out of your brain. It’s not like, Hey, I’m brilliant. Show up, paper right here, bam, another banger. No—you sit and you struggle with yourself and you stop cutting your hair. I’m not cutting my hair right now. You stop shaving, like I’m not shaving right now. You remember that you can fail. I’ve failed several times. The fact that everybody else don’t see that don’t give me the right to not see it.”

After Brooke Melton died in a car crash, her parents approached attorney Lance Cooper to investigate. What he found in her 2005 Chevy Cobalt would lead to GM’s 30 million-vehicle recall.

When they met, he was 45 and she was 17. In her 14 years as his mistress, she appeared in countless paintings, including Guernica.

A new Egyptian TV channel called 4Shbab—“for youth” in Arabic—aims to get young people interested in Islam through music videos and reality shows.

In 1985, a lost 22-year-old wrote a letter to a Manson girl-turned-model prisoner, asking for advice on conquering his demons. Then they fell in love.

Specialists Solomon Bangayan and Marc Seiden fought together in Bravo Company’s 3rd Platoon in Iraq. Both were killed. Here’s how they made it home.

How reality TV has changed tattooing.

Tattoos and tattoo artists have an undeniable power to attract, repulse, and intimidate. But when confronted with all this life and color, reality TV steamrolls it into the familiar “drama” of preening divas and wounded pride. “Everybody thinks they’re gonna change it,” said Anna Paige, an artist who said she’d turned down her chance at TV stardom. “Everybody thinks they’re gonna have some power.” But wait, isn’t she profiting from tattooing’s mass appeal? “I would have made money anyway.”