A visit to the newly on-the-market Jamesburg Earth Station, a massive satellite receiver that played a key role in communications with space, and its neighbors in an adjacent trailer park.

The first attempt at a behind-the-scenes narrative of LeBron James joining Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade on the Heat, a plan which had apparently been in the works since 2006.

What the great romantic novels of history can tell us about “seduction theory” and the cult of the pickup artist.

India’s greatest terror threat may not be militants slipping across the Pakistani border, but rather the homegrown Maoist rebels who control the villages of the interior.

When ‘Ceca’, the Madonna of the Balkans, met Arkan, bank robber turned paramilitary leader and war criminal, and how it all came to a tragic end in the lobby of the Belgrade Intercontinental.

Adapting from his book The Gun, Chivers traces how the design and proliferation of small arms, originating from both the Pentagon and the Russian army, rerouted the 20th century.

The Gabrielle Giffords shooting, from the vantage point of three central figures: Daniel Hernandez helped save the congresswoman’s life; Patricia Maisch stopped the shooter from reloading; Bill Badger tackled him.

From the proto-bleep to meta-bleep: how the US government protects us from the profane.

Stare at the game long enough and the distance between everything—players, league, game, court, self, other—begins to collapse. Everything becomes a metaphor for everything else, the league and your life each generating infinite layers of meaning for the other.

Vince Ramos wanted Phantom Secure to be the Uber of privacy-focused, luxury-branded phones—flood the market with devices, and sort out the law later. Then the FBI investigated him.

How the truth still eludes the investigation of the killing of four boys in Joypur, which sparked a bloody riot and massive displacement.

An Italian town plagued by mysterious fires turns to science, the church, and the law in a search for answers.

The rise and (potential) fall of the electronics superstore.

Browsing the stacks with The Washington Post’s Michael Dirda.

How the United States came to spend more on defense than all the other nations of the world combined.

The early life of “the onetime Black Panther, protégé of George Jackson, and sole member of the San Quentin Six convicted of murder.”

The Branch Davidians today, 20 years after the deadly standoff.

A Southland Tales fanboy goes down the rabbit hole with the movie’s director.

The people who go missing while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and the people who attempt to identify their remains.

Meeting Christopher Thomas Knight, a.k.a. the North Pond Hermit, who lived alone in the Maine woods for nearly 30 years.

The “insane playfulness, deliberate infantilism, nutty haikus, naked stripteases, free-form chants and literary war dances of the beats” and their leader.

How the feds flipped a corrupt American soccer official named Chuck Blazer and brought down the sport’s governing body.