“Oh my God, the NFL is using every trick in the book to market to kids.”

In her fight to end sexual abuse, the Olympic champion is challenging the very institutions she led to glory.

Athletic director Chris Hixon died in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. As a nation watched, his wife Debbi had to find a way to grieve.

A participant in a deadly shooting spree decides to snitch on his friends.

Brazil’s restless youth in the lead-up to the World Cup.

On the FBI’s program to infiltrate Muslim communities in America.

The unlikely people who’ve turned to selling weed in the recession.

Fighting to the finish in the most dangerous region of Afghanistan.

A trip to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.

Inside the battle between Ivanka and Don Jr. to be next in line.

“But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs—anybody can have that—I mean in truth. That’s what I write. What it really is like. I’m just telling a very simple story.”

Nobody noticed Connie Converse when she was trying to get a record deal in New York in the 1950s. Nobody stopped her when she left her life in Michigan in 1974, never to be seen again. Today, her music is heard by tens of thousands.

Another inmate was unable to complete his application, and assented to voluntary departure, in which an immigrant agrees to leave the country at his or her own expense. “You’ll be on your way back to Mexico today,” said the judge.

Her life in South Korea seemed perfect: new friends, a burgeoning career, reality-TV fame. But she was about to become notorious—disappearing without a trace, only to reappear pledging allegiance to North Korea. What happened to Lim Ji-hyun?

“I come to America, I go to England, I go to France…nobody’s at risk. They’re afraid of getting cancer, losing a lover, losing their jobs, being insecure. … It’s only in my own country that I find people who voluntarily choose to put everything at risk—in their personal life.”

I can’t ask anything. Once in a while if I’m forced into it I will conduct an interview, but it’s usually pro forma, just to establish my credentials as somebody who’s allowed to hang around for a while. It doesn’t matter to me what people say to me in the interview because I don’t trust it.

“In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That’s the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.”

At a playground in North Wales, kids are mostly left alone to experiment with fire, jump from great heights and play in a creek. It’s designed to teach the value of taking risks, a lesson many American children have stopped learning.

The author wanted to give up her day job but keep her lifestyle. So she turned to Seeking Arrangement, a site that pairs rich, older men interested in “companionship” with 20-somethings interested in “gifts.”

In 2001, Maksym Igor Popov defected to work as an informant in the U.S. But a decade later, he was back to scamming the FBI.

People said that women had no place in the Grand Canyon and would likely die trying to run the Colorado River. In 1938, two female scientists set out to prove them wrong.

Banned in Russia and cut by Condé Nast from the GQ website, this story (presented in full) details the intrigue behind the Moscow apartment bombings, blamed on Chechens, that allowed Putin to rapidly ascend to power.

Ex-members say it’s a cult preying on young creative women in New York. Its leader — a man who goes by International Scherick, compares himself to Jesus, and charges $200 minimum — says he’s empowering his clients to be successful in life and love.

Twenty-one-year-old Briton Lucie Blackman came to Tokyo and found work in the Roppongi district hostess bars, where businessmen come to flirt with paid companions, and Western women draw a premium fee. Two months later, she disappeared. She would be found underneath a bathtub in a beachside cave.