Before the guru, Prakashanand Saraswati, vanished in March—before a jury convicted him of sexual abuse; before he slipped across the border into Mexico overnight—he led the premier Hindu temple in Texas and, perhaps, the whole United States.

Was the biggest record sale in the history of Discogs actually someone selling the record to themself? Was a serial hoaxer who had posed as Jimi Hendrix’s son in blackface actually behind both the 1989 album and its 2017 sale?

In American baseball, flipping your bat is frowned upon. In South Korea, it’s an art.

The Ceasefire Babies was what they called us. Those too young to remember the worst of the terror because we were either in nappies or just out of them when the Provisional IRA ceasefire was called. I was four, Jonny was three. We were the Good Friday Agreement generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the spoils of peace. The spoils just never seemed to reach us.

“You know a storm is going to be bad, people in Oklahoma will tell you, when Gary England removes his jacket.” A profile of a meteorologist who has worked Tornado Alley for more than 40 years.

By the 1990s, the timeline of most superhero comics dipped back nearly 30 years, and beloved characters were saddled with impenetrable backstories and middle-age. Ultimate Marvel made Spider Man, X-Men, and the rest teens in the present day, rejuvenating the industry and setting the stage for Marvel’s string of hit films.

A visit to the newly on-the-market Jamesburg Earth Station, a massive satellite receiver that played a key role in communications with space, and its neighbors in an adjacent trailer park.

A profile of environmental activist Tim DeChristopher.

What happened when a plane full of marijuana crashed in Yosemite Park.

A look inside Donald Trump’s portfolio of exclusive real estate properties.

A case of peafowl dividing a neighborhood.

“They played a game of chess with our lives and we lost.”

A profile of Spears at her nadir.

He was the best alpinist of his generation, a quiet, unassuming Canadian known for bold ascents of some of the world’s most iconic peaks. Four months ago, at the age of 25, he traveled to Alaska to join climber Ryan Johnson for a first ascent outside Juneau. They never came back.

“But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs—anybody can have that—I mean in truth. That’s what I write. What it really is like. I’m just telling a very simple story.”

Dozens of young adults in rural Wales are hanging themselves, feeding an epidemic of copycat suicides that experts are have been unable to contain.

How the People’s Temple tore one family apart, told in part via letters:

We have at long last opened our hearts to you, expressing the sorrow and agony which we have restrained over six long years. Any time you express the wish to resume normal relations and exchange with us, the past will be forgotten. For after all we do love you and the children more than any other persons. We shall continue to cherish you to our last day on earth. The peerless joy of raising you from childhood to youth is a unique life experience, indeed. Your father and mother

Horror-rap’s annual festival draws thousands of clown-makeup wearing Juggalos - devotees of Insane Clown Posse - for a weekend devoted to spraying Faygo soda, rioting, and discussions of the occult.

Jaroslav Flegr and his theory about Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite found in cat feces:

If Flegr is right, the "latent" parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, "Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year."

Behind a financial fraud lay a secret plan to create a “mothership for con artists worldwide”:

Gamboa's tale involves secret ore deposits, hidden stocks of Soviet nuclear armaments, the Queen Mary ocean liner, portions of Antarctica, a new version of the Bible, allegations of fake deaths and miraculous resurrections, and a collection of some of the most colorful aliases ever to grace America's criminal and civil case dockets. (According to court documents, Korem also answers to the names Tzemach Ben David Netzer Korem and Branch Vinedresser.)

How Brock Pierce ended up as an Epstein guest along with a NASA computer engineer, an MIT professor and a Nobel laureate in theoretical physics is a bizarre tale involving Steve Bannon and an international man of mystery who may or may not be dead.

How a once-lauded psychiatrist became a prolific prescriber of painkillers in one of Virginia’s poorest and most isolated counties.

A profile of CeaseFire, a group of “violence interrupters” attempting to prevent street shootings by treating them like an infectious disease.

A trip to an uncompromising cattle ranch.