Ricky Rodriguez was born in the role of the messiah. His father was David Berg, the leader of the polygamous/incestuous cult The Children of God, which published a book documenting his early life:

In 1982 a shop in Spain printed several thousand copies of a book that was then distributed to group members around the world. Bound in faux leather, illustrated with hundreds of photographs, the 762-page tome meticulously chronicled Ricky's young life and was intended as a child-rearing manual for families. Its title, The Story of Davidito, was stamped in gold. With its combination of earnest prose and unabashed child pornography, it is perhaps the most disturbing book ever published in the name of religion.

Eventually, he left the cult and found work as an electrician. But revenge called him back.

An investigation into slavery in Mauritania:

An estimated 10% to 20% of Mauritania’s 3.4 million people are enslaved — in “real slavery,” according to the United Nations’ special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Gulnara Shahinian. If that’s not unbelievable enough, consider that Mauritania was the last country in the world to abolish slavery. That happened in 1981, nearly 120 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States. It wasn’t until five years ago, in 2007, that Mauritania passed a law that criminalized the act of owning another person. So far, only one case has been successfully prosecuted.

Almost five years ago, the author’s 13-year-old niece was murdered in her bedroom in suburban New Delhi. Since then, both of her parents have spent time in jail. Evidence, bungled by police, points to another possible killer. The trial has not yet begun.

A thousand years ago, huge pyramids and earthen mounds stood where East St. Louis sprawls today in Southern Illinois... At the city's apex in 1100, the population exploded to as many as 30 thousand people. It was the largest pre-Columbian city in North America, bigger than London or Paris at the time.

Why little has changed in popular American style in the last 20 years.

Why is this happening? In some large measure, I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out.

At 25, Stephen Glass was the most sought-after young reporter in the nation’s capital, producing knockout articles for magazines ranging from The New Republic to Rolling Stone. Trouble was, he made things up—sources, quotes, whole stories—in a breathtaking web of deception that emerged as the most sustained fraud in modern journalism.

Before ending up in Rikers, Jeremy Wilson — if that’s his real name — had portrayed himself as a Scottish-born DJ, a Cambridge-trained thespian, a Special Forces officer, a professor at MIT, an Apple executive, a soldier seeking asylum in Canada to escape anti-Semitic attacks in the United States, and an Irish mobster. Among others.

On the Susan B. Anthony List, the anti-choice power broker:

In a year when 11 women are running for the U.S. Senate, including six pro-choice Democratic incumbents, the efforts of a group founded by second-wave feminists, named for a first-wave feminist, could once again be a major force in reducing female representation in Congress.

There’s no telling how many guns there are in America—and when one gets used in a crime, no way for the cops to connect it to its owner. The only place the police can turn for help is a Kafkaesque agency in West Virginia, where, thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal and detective work is absurdly antiquated. On purpose.

Tomi Masters was a 23-year-old from Indiana who moved to California with dreams of making it big in the cannabis business. Then she met a hacker who introduced her to a dark new world of digital manipulation, suspicion, paranoia, and fear — one that swallowed her alive and left her floating in a river in the Philippines.

On July 11, 2002, the researchers revealed that they had synthesized the polio virus, which had been wiped out in the US in 1979. It was the first time a virus had been created from scratch with synthetic DNA. The work was funded by the Pentagon in part to establish whether terrorists could pull off such a feat. The answer was yes.

When I say I have a crush on you, what I’m saying is that I’m in love with the distance between us. I’m not in love with you: I don’t even know you. I’m in love with the escape that fantasizing about you promises. Poisoned, stung, bitten and bridled. The promise of being ground down until I disappear.

The story of a massacre in El Salvador.

An execution in war-torn Cuba.

In the aftermath of rape, a transition from prey to predator.

A gardener in Newark, NJ tries to grow the world’s best peppers.

An experiment in public defense.

In the U.S. military, more than half of rape victims are men.

On America’s vanishing night sky and life in perpetual light.

Reinventing a once-great whisky distillery in Scotland.

A profile of Gina Rinehart, the richest person in Australia.

A new era in the search for life on Mars.

A crash course in Tantra and superficial spirituality.

The fate of a star 16-year-old pitcher in Japan.

The benefits of getting sick in New York.