Michael Brown beat the odds by graduating from high school before his death—odds that remain stacked against black students in St. Louis and the rest of the country.

An acquaintance dies in Iraq and a writer investigates. “How did Michael come to inspire such loyalty? And how did he come to die on the floodplain of the Euphrates? I looked closer and saw they were the same.”

On January 13th, 2018, the residents of Hawaii picked up their phones to find a warning: a missile would be hitting the islands imminently. Here’s what people do when they think they only have 38 minutes left to live.

For 40 years, journalists chronicled the eccentric royal family of Oudh, deposed aristocrats who lived in a ruined palace in the Indian capital. It was a tragic, astonishing story. But was it true?

Vera Pratt moved to the island at age 70 hoping to find many years of happiness. Then she met “Psychic Angela” and her future got a whole lot more complicated.

The Permian Basin is ground zero for a billion-dollar surge of zombie oil wells.

In the days after 9/11, a photo of an unknown man falling from the South Tower appeared in publications across the globe. This is the story of that photograph, and of the search to find the man pictured in it.

An early attempt to explain the world-changing power of computer software—and the minds of young programmers like Bill Gates—to a mass audience. “Software,” the article begins, “is the magic carpet to the future.”

As the snow tires rumbled on the highway beneath us, a neo-Nazi "troll army" was several days into attacking the Jewish people of Whitefish on Spencer's behalf, based on a belief that some Whitefish Jews had recently tried to run Spencer and his mother out of town. Details about what actually happened between the town and the Spencers were in short supply, and, among the neo-Nazi troll brigades, anti-Semitism was in abundance.

Jurors from the Emmett Till trial revisit the case 50 years later.

On the stories we tell ourselves about happiness and the indecent questions we ask women who decided not to become moms.

A legend hangs on.

A private investigator asks a magazine to write a puff piece on his business. The journalist finds a real story.

When the greatest players in the world go head-to-head, things can get downright angsty.

Two Houston performance artists faux-marry an oak. Controversy ensues about the live installation’s relationship to the gay marriage debate.

What the heck happened?

Instead, they got scorched.

How two Jewish American political consultants helped create the world’s largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

A Texas con artist made millions promising prisoners’ families the thing they wanted most: to bring their children home.

How killing by remote control has changed the way we fight.

Before The Jerky Boys and Longmont Potion Castle there was Mal Sharpe.

Cesar Sayoc turned his loyalty toward Donald Trump into a literal assault on the President’s Democratic enemies in 2018.

The first major interview with The Simpsons’ most prolific and legendary writer.

The historian Allen C. Guelzo believes that the Confederate general deserves a more compassionate reading.