“For the first few days after the surgery, it was difficult to separate out my newly implanted sense from the bits of pain and sensation created by the trauma of having the magnet jammed in my finger.”

Sallie Belling was an inspirational figure in her community for having overcome a childhood of abuse, drugs, and prostitution — a childhood her sister Rachel says is pure fiction.

Welcome to Wakaliwood, where a resourceful producer in the slums of Kampala makes action movies like Who Killed Captain Alex? Uganda’s First Action Movie for about $200 apiece.

In California, Jeff Lee is a business school student at Stanford with an almost unhealthy work ethic and a penchant for selfies. In Malaysia, he’s teaching women how to win beauty pageants.

Anti-aging medicine has been an epicenter of quackery for more than a century, but an MIT scientist is waging his reputation on a new pill.

Baltimore’s state’s attorney gambled that prosecuting six officers for the death of Freddie Gray would help heal her city. She lost much more than just the case.

For decades, the United States and Britain’s vision of democracy and freedom defined the postwar world. What will happen in an age of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage?

A profile of long-time White House butler Eugene Allen. This article served as inspiration for the recent movie “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.”

Recounting an appearance on Letterman.

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The rise and fall of Intrade, the betting market for world events—elections, hurricanes, Academy Awards—and the death of its CEO near the top of Everest.

A profile of Perry Fellwock, a.k.a. Winslow Peck, who exposed the NSA in an 1972 article for Ramparts magazine.

In 2009, three followers of an Oprah-endorsed motivational speaker named James Arthur Ray died in an Arizona sweat lodge. Now, after serving two years in prison for negligent homicide, Ray is trying to get back on the self-help circuit.

A comic who had previously refused to discuss his private life opens up for the first time, riding high on the surprise success of Blazing Saddles more than thirty years into his career.

At one time, a whole generation of New York Times reporters wished they could write like McCandlish Phillips. Then he left them all for God.

Jane Neubauer was just out of basic training when a secretive military unit recruited her for an undercover mission. She and the Air Force disagree about what happened next.

A young man's connection with a circle-drawing, perceptive young woman.

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On the many lives and careers of Owsley Stanley (1935-2011), chemist, sound design innovator, and outback jeweler, whose name appears in the OED as a synonym for “a particularly pure form of LSD.”

David Headley helped plot the Mumbai terror attacks. Now his best friend is on trial for conspiring with him. The prosecution’s key witness: David Headley. The story of an informant trying to save his own life from the witness stand.

Inside a transport service for “problem” children:

In his first year of business, [Rick Strawn] escorted eight teens to behavior modification schools. Since then, his company has transported more than 700 kids between the ages of 8 and 17.

A profile of twenty-seven-year-old James O’Keefe, who came to national attention during the last election after his prank videos stung ACORN and Planned Parenthood. A subsequent attempt to bug Senator Mary Landrieu’s phones resulted in jail time for O’Keefe.

An interview with Rudy Giuliani’s fresh-out-of-college head speechwriter, who wrote the eulogies for every policeman and fireman who died on 9/11, giving him “the dark distinction of probably writing more eulogies than anyone else alive.”

The last thing child-welfare supervisor Chereece Bell wanted to see was what happened to 4-year-old Marchella Pierce. The last thing she expected was to go to jail for it.

As part of his obsessive search for evidence of UFOs, Gary McKinnon worked his way into thousands of government computers. The U.S. charged him with terrorism. Doctors diagnosed him with Asperger’s. And his lawyers started arguing a new version of the insanity defense.

Thirty-three years ago, a Chicago man was sentenced to death for murder. In 1999, another man confessed to the crime. Today, they are both free.