Secret codes. Legal threats. Betrayal. How one couple built a device to fix McDonald’s notoriously broken soft-serve machines—and how the fast-food giant froze them out.

Sentenced to life in prison at 16, Adolfo Davis hoped a Supreme Court ruling would give him a chance at a new beginning. But nothing about freedom turned out as he expected.

Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus got cancer—and then accidentally shared his diagnosis with the public over social media. Turns out getting sick renewed his faith, healed his old friendships, and reminded him what makes life worth living.

Authorities say an American electronics engineer committed suicide after working on a project involving a Chinese telecom giant. His family believes he was murdered.

On former nursing student One L. Goh, who killed six people at Oikos University in Oakland, California, and what it means to the Korean immigrant community.

On Cops, cop movies and Ferguson.

How the tech billionaire came to own 87,000 acres, three hotels, a wastewater treatment plant, a cemetery and 380 cats.

How Tony Galeota went from mobbed-up teen on Long Island to legendary strip club manager in Miami to distraught prisoner in a Panamanian jail.

Competing teams, some powered by billionaires and some by open-sourced code and volunteers, race to land a robot on the surface and claim a massive prize from Google.

When spouses get upset because their husband or wife wants to be frozen upon death, it’s not because they find the practice sacrilegious. It’s because their partner is consciously considering a future without them.

According to this excerpt from Woodward’s Obama’s Wars, the president’s military advisors gave him only one option: send an additional 40,000 troops. Obama pushed back.

A trip down America’s most haunted road.

“It was a crumbling Parkdale rooming house, populated by drug users and squatters and available on the cheap. We were cash-strapped, desperate to move and hemmed in by a hot market.”

"I'm gonna come after you with everything I have." —Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

Life and debt as a young writer in New York.

In a time when no one agrees on anything, some vague consensus can be found around the idea that more American manufacturing would be good. Rarely does someone say publicly, “Actually, I think there should be less American manufacturing.” (Although it happens.)

I don’t want my part to get skipped over, but I still don’t know how to write directly about what went down between me and M. All I can do is worry a detail like an R&B singer worries a line.

“My entire vocation as an investigative reporter was predicated on being able to reveal truths, and yet I could not even rustle up the evidence to convince my own mother.”

Church-loving surf instructor Matthew Taylor Coleman fell into online conspiracy theories, then allegedly admitted to killing his kids to save the world. How did no one see it coming?

Two years after she sued producer Dr. Luke, saying he had drugged, raped, and emotionally abused her, Kesha is still bound to her original recording contract. She owes $100,000 (conservatively) per month on legal bills and can’t release any new music.

September 11, 2001:

“I felt like I was intruding on a sacrament,” said one firefighter, Maureen McArdle-Schulman. “They were choosing to die and I was watching them and shouldn’t have been, so me and another guy turned away and looked at the wall, and we could still hear them hit.”

Jonathan Safran Foer It’s been an awfully long time since we last spoke. Four years? And it’s been a long time since the reading world last got new material from you. About seven years? What’s been going on? Jeffrey Eugenides I’ve been writing a book.