CeCe McDonald, a homeless trans teen in Minneapolis, was charged with murder for defending herself. Then she became a folk hero.

“After listening to him since I was a kid and seeing him live for—gulp—nearly 40 years, I think I’m beginning to figure it out.”

Two truckers talk on a wintry Alaskan highway.

In 1981, Mauritania became the last country on Earth to abolish slavery. The law had little effect; at least 140,000 people are still enslaved today. Their best hope for freedom is an abolitoinist named Biram Dah Abeid.

A woman travels with a band on the way to their next show.

“You are reading this because you have no idea what NASA is doing. And NASA, tongue-tied by jargon, can’t figure out how to tell you. But the agency is engaged in work that can be more enduring and far-reaching than anything else this country is paying for.”

Relief pitcher Donnie Moore is best known for giving up a crucial home run during Game 5 the 1986 ALCS. It’s not what led to his suicide a few years later.

Cemetery field recordings reveal terrifying messages.

Kelli Stapleton, whose teenage daughter was autistic and prone to violent rages, had come to fear for her life. So she made a decision that perhaps only she could justify.

Migos, a young Atlanta rap trio, has decamped to a mansion outside of town to avoid trouble, ride Go-Karts, shop for $2300 backpacks, and continue their streak of red-hot singles.

Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, who left Pro-Choice activism for born-again Christianity and a strange life of financial opportunism, died this week.

Catch shares are touted by the government and environmental groups as the solution to overfishing. But for a new generation under the system, the economics consist mainly of “absentee landlords, brokers and bankers, [and] fish quota that costs more than your house.”

The author participates in the Society for Creative Anachronism’s “Crown Lyst, the twice-yearly event when knights will battle with ancient weapons and the victor will be named the new king.”

“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.