Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Hell’s Angels’ gave inside look at a notorious motorcycle gang

A biker from Hell's Angels said Hunter S. Thompson's book about the group was mostly 'cheap trash'

Thompson's popular coverage of the motorcycle gang was not necessarily popular with the gang members themselves. In a bizarre and amusing TV interview from 1967, a biker is given the opportunity to confront Thompson about using the gang for profit, misrepresenting them, and failing to buy beer he promised them.

‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved’ signaled the birth of Gonzo Journalism

The 1970 essay opens with a crude conversation between Hunter S. Thompson, the author, and a man at an airport bar. Thompson’s first-person account places him as an active participant. Instead of focusing on the race itself, Thompson paints vivid details of his experience with the hedonistic scene surrounding it.

Richard Hell is one of punk's most accomplished writers

Richard Hell is punk royalty, known for his work with Television, the Heartbreakers, and the Voidoids. He's also a well-traveled poet, novelist, critic, and memoirist, as this detailed profile from Poetry Foundation's Andrew Marzoni shows.

Joan Didion's 1967 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' laid the hippie counterculture bare

Didion wrote a detailed account of living alongside hippies in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury area in the 1960s. Beyond their style and politics, Didion uncovered chaos, with one particularly shocking interview of a 5-year-old on LSD. Her stories challenged the movement's message of freedom and utopia in California.

Read the New York Times profile of TAKI 183

The 1971 article about the young graffiti artist and his many acolytes exposed the burgeoning subculture to a large audience and also detailed the effort to clean the work from the city's walls. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Tony Hawk’s rise from outsider to skateboarding legend

In this podcast, Tony Hawk discusses his path from being an outsider in a niche sport to becoming skateboarding’s most recognizable figure—reflecting on competition dominance, business ventures, and lessons learned throughout his career.

A lost Jack Kerouac story was discovered in the belongings of a gunned-down mob boss

The unpublished "The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing" was found in the belongings of Paul Castellano, who was murdered in 1985. It's unclear why Castellano had it, though an heir says it was originally in the collection of a "noted San Francisco-based poet...who received it directly from the author."

He was one of the first writers to cover surfing

For his 1872 travelogue “Roughing It”, Mark Twain visited Hawaii and described a then-peculiar sport: surfing. He even recalls his own attempts to catch a wave, writing, “I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me.”

‘Dispatches’ by Michael Herr pushed the boundaries of war journalism

Straying from the typical protocol of reporting casualties and soldiers' whereabouts, Herr reported about the Vietnam War from the field while emphasizing its surreal and tragic nature. His account detailed the experiences of soldiers, while also expressing uncertainty about the meaning of the war.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Diving into the life of Henry David Thoreau

Before he went to live in the woods by Walden Pond, Thoreau (who originally went by David Henry) lived a fascinating life, opening a school with his brother, working for his father's pencil-making business, and becoming close to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who'd become a mentor figure for the aspiring writer. This deep profile explores all that and more.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

'Burners' say their time spent at Burning Man changed their life

A first-hand account from habitual burner Theresa Christine gives insight into the unique festival offering endless art, entertainment, parties, and genuine interactions with strangers.

Autograph hunters form secretive networks to trade celebrity access tips

Inside the rarefied world of the autograph collector, individuals who will go to great lengths to gather celebrities' signatures.

The early Los Angeles punk scene found a home in Chinatown

Acts like Black Flag, X, and Circle Jerks performed in unconventional venues like Madame Wong’s and the Hong Kong Cafe—restaurants in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood that became an integral part of the nascent scene.

Before he was a famous novelist, John Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery.

Actors on 'All the President's Men' immersed themselves in real-world reporting

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford spent months shadowing the real Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward—working at The Washington Post, living with Bernstein's family, and studying their mannerisms—to bring authentic nuance to their portrayals of Watergate's investigative journalists.

A riveting retelling of the 1846 Donner Party, the doomed western pioneers

Eighty-one people went with the Donner Party into the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter of 1846 via what they thought would be a shortcut to the West. Only 41 came out. The infamous episode of Western travel is captured in narrative detail in this four-part podcast series. This first episode reveals the motivations that pushed the party on this specific route.

The first chili cook took place in a Texas ghost town

"The Great Chili Confrontation" happened October 21, 1967, in Terlingua, Texas, a small ghost town near Big Bend National Park. The showdown was between journalists H. Allen Smith, who wrote an article titled “Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do,” and Wick Fowler, a Texas reporter.

In the 1980s, excerpts from fake diaries of Adolf Hitler were published in a prominent German magazine

Excerpts from the diaries were published in other publications around the world, like The Sunday Times, despite uncertainty about their authenticity. After forensic analysis, the diaries were proven to be fake. The diaries were produced by Konrad Kujau, a petty criminal who frequently produced counterfeits.

Matt Groening wrote the comic 'Life in Hell' before creating 'The Simpsons'

The strip began in 1977 as a self-published book featuring disturbing-looking rabbits navigating the indignities of life in Los Angeles, where Groening had recently moved. It was picked up by the Los Angeles Reader in 1980 and then syndicated by over 250 newspapers by 1986. Eventually, it caught the eye of James L Brooks, who was looking for a cartoonist to create sketches for "The Tracey Ullman Show" for Fox.

Searching for a hate crime's unknown victim

In 2004, two federal agents heard a rumor: two white men, one under investigation for an unrelated crime, had gotten away with killing a Black man 15 years earlier as a requirement to join a white supremacist group. One of the men confessed to the crime, though he didn't know who was killed. This series dives into the search for the slain man and the justice he deserved.

Read the first (and only) issue of the magazine started by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and others

"Fire!!" was founded in New York in 1926 by Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and several other artists involved in the Harlem Renaissance. The publication was intended to flout the respectability of the middle-class Black tradition and instead engage with sometimes controversial ideas in a contemporary vernacular. The magazine's offices were, ironically, burned to the ground shortly after the first issue.

LaMarcus Thompson wanted roller coasters to save people from Satan’s temptations

The inventor and businessman who is known as “the Father of the American roller coaster” was also a religious Sunday school teacher who wished to distract the public from indulging in popular sinful amusements of the time like saloons and brothels.

A look inside North Korea through photographs

What does life look like inside North Korea? Get a behind-the-scenes peek through 38 photos in the Atlantic.

The Harlem Hellfighters, WWI's longest-serving US regiment

The nickname was given to the 369th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black fighting force of Americans attached to the French Army during World War I. The group fought for 191 days, longer than any other regiment in the United States Army, and lost more men (1,500) than any other.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

The origins of the Rolling Stones

Founded by Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones emerged during the massive shifts taking place in the 1960s. From the start, they were the edgier version of the Beatles, and their complex reputation gave them a unique profile in the public eye.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Experimental hantavirus vaccines and therapies, still under development, have long been funded by the US military.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.