In a Plano bowling alley one night, Bill Fong came so close to perfection that it nearly killed him.

Blake Bailey was my favorite teacher. Years later, he forced himself on me. Why did I seek his approval for so long?

The president is overseeing a sea change in the world of economic policy, and so much hangs in the balance.

Covid allowed Raquel Esquivel and 4,500 others to be released from overcrowded federal prisons. So why is she back behind bars?

“Morning and night the hordes of clerks and stenographers and business men who fill the offices of down-town New York have poured across Newspaper Row and City Hall Park with scarcely a glance at the labor progressing underfoot that is going to bring them so many minutes nearer their work in the morning, and at night so many minutes nearer their play.”

“Norbert Grupe—a Nazi soldier’s son, boxer, professional wrestler, failed actor, criminal, and miserable human being who was never so happy as when he could make someone hate him—was once a man so beautiful that other men wanted to paint him.”

A classified Guantánamo Bay interrogation log reveals the techniques used on Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called 20th 9/11 hijacker.

Not only is the penny useless, it costs the U.S. Treasury $50 million per year. So why is it still around?

“If genius is hard to define, madness is even more so.” One chess champion’s take on the tortured life of another.

All Artur Samarin wanted to be was a normal American teenager. So that’s what he became.

After decades of influence, the media mogul isn’t so much a person as an epoch.

Orthopedic surgery would have bankrupted us in the United States. So we went to Mexico instead.

Want to know why wild conspiracism can be so irresistible? Ask a 14-year-old girl.

How billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffett pay so little in income tax compared to their massive wealth—sometimes, even nothing.

Anthony Veasna So died unexpectedly last winter, before his debut book was released. Everyone remembers him differently.

Arlena Lindley’s boyfriend Alonzo Turner beat her for months and murdered her child. So why was she sent to prison for 45 years?

The story of dog-scent lineup innovator Keith Pikett and the not-so-scientific science behind forensics.

How a tiny island 5,000 miles from the U.S. mainland has produced so many NFL players.

In 1920, Harvard University officials suspected that some students were gay. So they kicked them all out.

Russian serial killer Alexander Pichushkin was so prolific that even he doesn’t know how many he killed.

Everyone knows who killed Rodolfo Illanes. So why is his death such a mystery?

At 15, Ruben Urbina couldn’t bear his depression and anxiety anymore. So he called police with a chilling threat.

A report from Antartica, where the ecosystem is changing so fast scientists have no idea what will come next.

“My mother and I were very close, but when she died last year there was still so much I didn’t know about her.”

It was a fraught, utterly uncharted presidential transition—four years ago, from Obama to Trump. It was a prelude for so much that followed.