Spoiler: They thrive. By Alex Teytelboym.

How Primo Levi survived. By James Wood.

The fabled Skull and Bones society is the stuff of lore at Yale University. Harvard University has Final Clubs, known as a grooming place for the rich and powerful. In Tuscaloosa, a group called "The Machine" may not rise to Ivy League heights of prestige or mystique. But it's a powerful force at the University of Alabama... By Jay Reeves.

When Kepler was at the very height of his scientific career, his mother was accused of witchcraft. By Ulinka Rublack.

Can John McAfee, a gun-toting, vodka-swilling serial liar, save us from the hackers who want to spy on us and steal our identities? By Stephen Rodrick.

“We have to create culture, don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow.” — Terence McKenna. By Jordan Bates.

In March 1917, the Philadelphia-based modernist painter George Biddle hired a 42-year-old German woman as a model. She visited him in his studio, and Biddle told her that he wished to see her naked. The model threw open her scarlet raincoat... By John Higgs.

A hundred years ago, Randolph Bourne was a hot property—an intellectual wunderkind who was taking the American intellectual scene by storm. Bourne was the complete package: brilliant, charismatic, filled with social energy, and exquisitely attuned to the moment... By Andrew J. Bacevich.

An interview with the man who was picked by Kennedy to be the first black man in space --and why he was forced to quit, on The Memory Palace podcast with Nate DiMeo. [Audio]

In 2012 the campaign to reelect Barack Obama posted a web ad called “The Life of Julia.” Divided into slides depicting various stages of life, the ad followed Julia’s progress from the beginning of her formal education at age three until retirement at sixty-seven... By Samuel Goldman.

Remembering Robert Conquest's literary life. By John O'Sullivan.

“When I first started online, it was so unbelievably vile,” says YouTuber Laci Green over a late-June brunch of chicken sausage scrambles in her Berkeley, California, neighborhood... By Rae Votta.

A new bizarre fashion trend suggests you may have been overlooking the ultimate clothing item. People in Taiwan are stripping naked and posing in nothing other than a plastic bag.

A bacterial infection turns non-farming social amoebae into farmers, evolutionary biologists report.

The more confusing the taxes, the bigger the profits.

A young Phoenix woman who was adopted was able to find her half-sister within a matter of hours with the help of social media and 12 News.

What does a "perfect body" look like? It depends who you ask - and where they are. UK online pharmacy Superdrug Online Doctors recently created a project called "Perceptions

State officials are investigating a complaint that raises this question: Should a man who was convicted of poisoning children on his son's football team in 2000 be in charge of an entire city's water?

Published report said partnership dates back to 1985.

An out-of-control influx of near-naked women jockeying for tips has turned Times Square into the XXX-Roads of the World.