Inside America’s most elite girls school.

Once a wide-eyed scholarship kid attending a school for the daughters of the rich and famous, Anastasia Mills Healy, reflects on the humiliating hazing that taught her how to stand up for herself.

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Welcome to America’s most elite girls boarding school. Let the hazing begin.

The chaotic saga of Florida’s most notorious police impersonator

Everyone knows of someone who's let power get to their head, but few take it as far as Jeremy Dewitte. Dylan Taylor-Lehman brings you the exceedingly strange and darkly humourous story of a Florida funeral escort who took his road-safety duties a little too seriously and went viral.

The extremely f*#!ing chaotic saga of the world’s most notorious police impersonator 

First person stories: the first family of human cannonballing

In the late 1960s, David and Jeannie Smith gave up their jobs for a daredevil life in the circus - with six children in two. Thousands of cannonball shots and multiple Guinness World Records later, Abigail Edge brings you the incredible story of the family that defied gravity. 

The first family of human cannonballing

Crime has always had ripple effects on the wider community.

In 1885, in the opulent seaside Newport, a wealthy and beloved Black businessman turns up dead. The prime suspect is his son-in-law, a dashing medical student set to become one of the country’s first Black surgeons. The resulting trial will tear the town in two. The resulting trial will tear the town in two. Nancy Markey and Kay Adams tell this fascinating story.

A gilded age tale of murder and madness

Memories might fail, but stories remain. 

Mai Serhan's family have lived around the world, but their history has become lost over time and distance. So, from Lebanon to China, she's finally gathered their conflicting stories together, studied countless maps and read forgotten letters to recreate her lost ancestral home in a once small village in Palestine.

I have never been to the place where I am from, but I will imagine it for us

After her mother remarried, racism and prejudice found their way into her home. 

As an Indonesian-born adoptee living in Stockholm, Anna Grundström reflects on Sweden's growing white supremacy movement and how her life changed when her stepbrother started to dabble with the groups.

Living with a skinhead, while living in my brown skin

How was she supposed to continue as though nothing had happened at all?

When Laura Green-Russel was 13, her father was murdered in cold blood during the summer holidays. Almost thirty years later she reflects on the terrible moment that changed the course of her life forever.

Protected: murder to middle school

Their influence has lived on for decades.

It was the era when video killed the radio star when glitz and glamour and bubblegum pop dominated the airwaves. But deep in the heart of Hollywood, a handful of musicians and misfits were subverting the pop culture narrative. Shawna Kenney explores some fascinating stories from the 1980s Hollywood punk rock scene.

Protected: punk rock freaks in the heart of Hollywood

A Playboy editor always has more on his plate than just editing stories.

For a brief while in the 1990s, disillusioned junior reporter Vijai Maheshwari found himself as the editor-in-chief of Playboy Russia. In this fascinatingly bizarre tale, he takes you back through the hedonistic playground of sex, drugs and early-stage capitalism in post-imperial Moscow - until his reign came to a screeching halt.

My strange, seductive stint as the Hugh Hefner of Moscow

Meet the most dedicated family of Mets superfans, even amid the worst sporting luck. 

The New York Mets fans, the 7-line army, are a loyal bunch that has been going strong for over a decade. And Michael Stahl meets with some of the longest-serving members that support their team no matter what's on the scoreboard.

The centerfield soldiers of the 7-line army

Are these groups a community or just a brand?

The University of Michigan's Sigma Phi chapter breaks all the rules as the first queer-centric fraternity. Its members saw it as a lifesaving space and decided that going all-gender was the obvious thing to do. The national organization responded by suing them. But, as the US grapples with the debate about whether traditional Greek life is a positive or negative force on campus, Caroline Caitlin explores how the space is imperative for growth in the community.

Inside the queer-centric frat that dared to question what a frat even is

The level of excitement was intoxicating. 

Peech Breshears wasn't born blind, but after a devastating diabetes diagnosis in her 30s, her life changed overnight when she woke up to black spots obscuring her vision. Although she didn't know it then, in this deeply personal account she explains how it sparked an unrelenting hope to get her back on the saddle. 

The fastest formerly blind ‘Biker Babe’ in Wichita

How did a tiny sex shop thrive in this conservative city?

Sex education is not a priority in Florence, Alabama — the last state where selling sex toys is punishable by law. Hallie Lieberman meets with the owners of Sugar and Spice, three generations of women from the same family trying to change that.

The deep south's Dames of dildos

"Debauchery, intrigue, romance: Dejima had it all."

From the early 17th to mid-19th centuries, Japan was closed off from much of the world, only maintaining limited trading routes with China, Korea, the Ryukyu Islands and the Ainu people. This is why, when the Dutch traders first set eyes on Dejima in 1641 - a tiny artificial island in Nagasaki Bay - they could have been forgiven for taking the next boat back to Europe. 

During Japan's isolationist period, Europeans were tolerated only on the island, solely for the silk, sugar, and other trade opportunities they brought and entirely on Japanese terms - Christianity, western women and even funerals were forbidden. Rob Goss explores the island's extraordinary history as a thriving Dutch trading post, where the West was permitted to meet with the East and a place like no other. 

The wild west outpost of Japan’s isolationist era

A shocking tale about elites, teenagers and consent.

A wealthy California school had a hookup game where boys “drafted” girls, then tracked their sex acts. A decade later, Lena Crown and her classmates still debate whether “FSL” was harmless teenage hijinks or a symptom of toxic rot in our elite enclave.

"Piedmont High’s teachers and parents remained oblivious to the league’s existence for most of its life span. Then, on October 19, 2012, shortly after James took the helm, the high school principal sent a letter informing parents of several “troubling incidents involving our students.” The letter outlined the tenets of the Fantasy Slut League as they knew it: Girls were drafted 'unbeknownst to most of them,' though 'many students (male and female) were aware of it and participated.' The sex acts girls engaged in had often been encouraged by “manipulation by older students that included alcohol to impair 'judgment' and 'social demands to be popular.' An investigation had been conducted. The letter urged parents to 'Please be bold in your conversations with your child.'" 

My high school’s secret fantasy slut league

What would you do if your employer refused to pay you?

We go back to March 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic is underway, much of Argentina has hunkered down indoors and, in what will become a story with many twists and turns, the La Nirva cookie factory employees are making a last-ditch effort to demand the wages they are rightfully owed.

Things had been going downhill since 2018. The factory, which once could produce 1.6 million cookies per day, had its power, gas and running water turned off, and the employees' salaries had been significantly reduced. By October 2019, they had had enough. Sofia Kaun and Facundo Iglesia explore the inspiring story of how the community rallied behind these disgruntled workers as they took back control of their paycheques and lives.

Revolución on the cookie factory floor

What happened to the mother of two?

Andrea Knabel spent countless hours searching for missing people. Then one day she was the one who disappeared. Her family and friends — and half the internet — are still searching. Mark Oprea delves into the mysterious vanishing of the 37-year-old and the events leading up to it.

"In 2020 alone, 59,369 women over the age of 21 went missing in the United States, yet only a small sliver of them — usually white women — get national media attention. Andrea’s case has been featured everywhere, from a four-part Finding Andrea miniseries on Investigation Discovery (produced by Randy Tat, the filmmaker Nancy had connected with before Andrea went missing) to a recent segment on Dr. Phil. It also has its own subreddit. And, just as the Missing in America cases did for Andrea, now her own case has become fodder for fellow female searchers."

The missing persons investigator who went missing herself

From the mic stand to the witness stand.

The host of a true-crime podcast noticed that a subscriber of his Patreon had the same name as a person in a lesser-known case that they had covered. Then, he discovered that the same person had made unsolicited calls to investigators with offers to divulge what he knew about the disappearance and began giving interviews to podcasts and news outlets.

Dylan Taylor-Lehman explores Steve Pankey’s long obsession with the disappearance of Jonelle Matthews in 1984, which has made him central to a trial on the case. But is he a cold-blooded killer who got away with murder, or just a true-crime obsessive craving attention?

"Pankey spoke calmly and patiently on the podcast, with Dentzel giving him space to tell his side of the story, but also interrupting him to clarify the many twists and turns in the narrative. Pankey didn’t sound particularly worried that he was a person of interest in the case; he stated repeatedly that he hoped the crime would be solved and the perpetrator brought to justice. He said he appreciated Dentzel’s no-nonsense attitude and felt he’d been very fair to him."

The true-crime “podcast junkie” turned real life murder suspect

What happened when they stepped into the ring.

Performing with wild animals had always been a man's job, but when the men went off to fight in World War I, and the horses, camels and elephants were taken away, Elizabeth Kayes stepped up and got in the ring with the lions. This was the moment where the legacy of the Kayes women began.

Amy Hughes explores the great sacrifice and triumph of this mother-daughter duo against the backdrop of The Great War and the years that followed, paving the way for women in circuses everywhere.

The fearless mother-daughter duo who tamed lions to save the circus

How far would you go for revenge?

After the King of France beheaded a nobleman on questionable charges, his devastated widow transformed into “the Lioness of Brittany” and spent the next decade exacting her retribution. Julia Métraux explores the tale of Jeanne de Clisson, a wealthy Frenchwoman in the 1300s who became a murderous pirate.