What the popular game says about our subconscious.

On paleopathologist Gino Fornaciari and his investigations into murders from centuries past.

On Japan’s Hokkaido, an island the size of Ireland, and its rebel leader of lore, Shakushain.

A trip to a pepper-eating contest in remote India.

Searching for a mysterious whirpool on an obscure map.

The story of a whale attack.

Learning of a plot against the life of the newly elected Lincoln, Alan Pinkerton decamps to Baltimore and infiltrates the conspiracy.

An internet pioneer loses hope in the promise of web culture.

In 1945, a fire tore through the home of George and Jennie Sodder. Four children escaped; five vanished.

On William Cockford and his 1800s gambling hall in London, where much of the British aristocracy lost its fortune.

A profile of Sir Dr. NakaMats, who claims to have invented over 3,000 things, including the floppy disk and karaoke machine.

The revolutionary and the silver screen.

A spy takes on his own agency.

How a group of farmers came to believe that their relatives were returning from the grave.

On the 1,600-year-old text that suggests that Jesus, long believed to be celibate, was a married man.

For days I've been slogging through a rain-soaked jungle in Indonesian New Guinea, on a quest to visit members of the Korowai tribe, among the last people on earth to practice cannibalism.

The sewer hunters, or “toshers,” of 19th century London.

Knowing where to find the most valuable pieces of detritus was vital, and most toshers worked in gangs of three or four, led by a veteran who was frequently somewhere between 60 and 80 years old. These men knew the secret locations of the cracks that lay submerged beneath the surface of the sewer-waters, and it was there that cash frequently lodged.

“Good espresso depends on the fourM’s: Macchina, the espresso machine; Macinazione, the proper grinding of a beans; Miscela, the coffee blend and the roast, and Mano is the skilled hand of the barista, because even with the finest beans and the most advanced equipment, the shot depends on the touch and style of the barista.”

A history of the fowl.

For a half-century fires have burned under Centralia, PA.

How movies, music and literature reproduce the disaster.

Few men have acquired so scandalous a reputation as did Basil Zaharoff, alias Count Zacharoff, alias Prince Zacharias Basileus Zacharoff, known to his intimates as “Zedzed.” Born in Anatolia, then part of the Ottoman Empire, perhaps in 1849, Zaharoff was a brothel tout, bigamist and arsonist, a benefactor of great universities and an intimate of royalty who reached his peak of infamy as an international arms dealer -- a “merchant of death,” as his many enemies preferred it.

A story of endurance in the face of unimaginably brutal conditions.

How black market mining is destroying the Peruvian rain forest and enslaving child workers.

How information replicates, mutates, and evolves.