The Columbia shuttle was to be a revolution for NASA. But a year before its first launch, the shuttle was several years behind schedule, had cost $1 billion, and wasn’t guaranteed to ever get off the ground.

Kurdistan is the safest and most stable region in Iraq and at the center of its modern history is Amna Surak Prison, ground zero for both a genocide and an uprising.

How Warren Beatty seduced the studios into making the comedy Ishtar, which set the modern bar for cinematic debacles. (An excerpt from Peter Biskind’s Star.)

In 1937, Harvard researchers began following the lives of 268 students. Year after year, the men were interviewed and given medical and psychological exams. The goal? Find a formula for happiness.

Throughout the ’50s and ’60s, media outlets including the New York Times and CBS News provided the CIA with information and cover for agents. Then everyone decided to pretend it had never happened.

The story of Charles Goodyear, who dedicated his life to inventing usable rubber yet has little to show for it, aside from his name on the side of a blimp.

Alan Young has been running the same scam for years: posing as a member of The Temptations and smooth-talking his way into luxury hotel rooms and prostitutes. Despite his clear charm, he admits he has “no skills other than being a con man.”

Behind the scenes of Conan vs. Leno. An excerpt from The War for Late Night.

The young Woody Allen writes jokes for supper club comedians, decides he will never make it as a performer and then does, idolizes and is snubbed by Mort Sahl, and develops the comic persona which will make him a star.

Dandenis Muñoz Mosquera, a.k.a. “La Quica,” was one of Pablo Escobar’s top killers. Now he’s in a maximum security prison in Colorado. Here’s the thing: for all his crimes, La Quica may not have committed the one that put him away.

On the last day of their junior year at Harvard, one roommate kills the other, then hangs herself. The press descends. A year later, a reporter searches for the real story.

What happened when the founder of North Face and Esprit bought a chunk of Chile the size of a small state, intending to live with a select group inside it and turn it case study for ecological preservation. It turned out, however, that Chileans didn’t really like that idea.

When Elon Musk went to Russia to buy some rockets.

On the Republican slate for the 2016 presidential election: “Of the dozen or so people who have declared or are thought likely to declare, every one can be described as a full-blown adult failure.”

On the chaotic letters of journalist and Dr. Strangelove screenwriter Terry Southern.

She claimed to be a porn recruiter who just needed to see the women have sex with her photographer once before she could book them for jobs. But she and her photographer were the same person — a freelance tech journalist named Matt Hickey.

In Liberland, a small borderland between Serbia and Croatia, ‘‘government will be banned except for three things: security, legal stuff and diplomacy.’’

Kim Suozzi, who died at 23, chose to have her brain preserved for future revival. It’s not as far-fetched a prospect as you’d think.

While a Marine stationed in Afghanistan, Austin Tice decided he wanted to become a war photographer. He entered Syria and filed stories for McClatchy and the Washington Post. Then he disappeared.

An interview with Michael Schur, who wrote for Saturday Night Live and The Office before co-creating Parks and Recreation and Brookyn Nine-Nine.

How women in the L.A. comedy scene, long pressured to stay quiet about sexual abuse and harassment for the sake of their careers, began to fight back.

“Florida, in some ways, resembles a modern Ponzi scheme. Everything is fine for me if a thousand newcomers come tomorrow. The problem is…no one knew what would happen if they stopped coming.”

A mysterious cache of documents could prove that a man serving a life sentence for homicide was framed by corrupt Alabama authorities—if the documents, and the man, can be believed.

Feminism brought the opposition together for the Women’s March on Washington. But how long will that last, and how many converts can it win?

On the eve of the Civil War, a nightmare at sea turned into one of the greatest rescues in maritime history. More than a century later, a rookie treasure hunter went looking for the lost ship—and found a different kind of ruin.