The lives of Sue and Hector Badeau, who felt a calling to raise children and adopted twenty of them.

A profile of Mike Judge, creator of the now-resuscitated Beavis and Butthead.

How the death of a Muslim recruit revealed a culture of brutality.

A segregated housing development washed away in a flood can still explain why Portland, Oregon, is such a “white” city.

A profile of John Alan Schwartz, creator of one of the most notorious movies ever made.

The many lives of Josh Tillman, who on the way to releasing one of the year’s best albums was “a defiant child of God, a broke dishwasher, a successful drummer, a Dionysian shaman, a failed poet, a drug-hoovering spiritualist, and a gleeful prankster.”

On gray.

A 27-year old reporter is kidnapped in Somalia and held hostage for over a year.

Three siblings from Chicago ran away to become jihadis. Is it fair to try them as terrorists?

He has been president for more than a year—so why is he still holding rallies?

Who is this person?

The life and times of two professional muggers in 1970’s lower Manhattan:

Hector and Louise usually work whatever neighborhood they’re living in. They knock over every old man on the block, every young man who follows Louise’s swinging hips and pocketbook, and every young girl attracted by Hector’s olive eyes. They rough up all of them, take whatever money is there, and then move on.

When Raymond Stansel was busted in 1974, he was one of Florida’s biggest pot smugglers. Facing trial and years in prison, he jumped bail, changed his name, holed up in a remote Australian outpost and began his second life as an environmental hero.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, oil magnate and once the richest man in Russia, delivers a speech from prison, where he has lived since 2003.

Oskar Groening, an SS officer whose duties included counting confiscated money, describes his time posted to Auschwitz.

A profile of Rupert Murdoch from 1995, as he fought monopoly charges in the U.S. and U.K. and prepared to expand his empire into China.

Murdoch is a pirate; he will cunningly circumvent rules, and sometimes principles, to get his way, as his recent adventures in China demonstrate.

Revisiting a 30-year-old beating death in St. Louis.

In the last year alone, over 150,000 people have risked their lives to leave.

When model Kimberly Fattorini died after a night out in Hollywood, everyone assumed she’d accidentally overdosed. But there was more to the story.

Horseshoe crab blood is an irreplaceable medical marvel. Which means it’s incredibly valuable. Which means biomedical companies are bleeding 500,000 crabs a year. Nobody knows quite what that means for the crabs.

For centuries, dowsers have claimed the ability to find groundwater, precious metals, and other quarry using divining rods and an uncanny intuition. Is it the real deal or woo-woo?

On America’s relationship with the right to bear arms, from the Founding Fathers to the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan.

“The mythical image of Malick that has been built up over the last 30-odd years is, in essence, a creation of the same media corps with whom the filmmaker himself has continually chosen not to engage.”

On the American teenager who was kidnapped by Islamic militants while on vacation in the Philippines.