It's Candyland on the surface and dark underneath. Finn the Human and Jake the Dog battle a pastiche of geekish villainy in Adventure Time, Cartoon Networks unstoppable hit...

Last weekend at the Emerald Cup, a sprawling hempfest held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Dennis Peron got a lifetime achievement award and I got to present it. The marijuana legalization movement would not have achieved its great breakthrough in 1996 had it not been for Dennis, the founder and maitre’d of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club...

How in the world did a family of squirrel-eating, Bible-thumping, catchphrase-spouting duck hunters become the biggest TV stars in America? And what will they do now that they have 14 million fervent disciples? Our Drew Magary toured the Louisiana backwater with Phil Robertson and the Duck Dynasty gang to find out.

Let’s start with the crossbow, because the crossbow is huge. I’m sitting in the passenger seat of a camo-painted ATV, rumbling through the northern Louisiana backwoods with Phil Robertson, founder of the Duck Commander company, patriarch at the heart of A&E’s smash reality hit Duck Dynasty, and my tour guide for the afternoon. There are seat belts in this ATV, but it doesn’t look like they’ve ever been used. Phil is not wearing one. I am not wearing one, because I don’t want Phil to think I’m a pussy. (Too late!) The crossbow—a Barnett model equipped with a steel-tipped four-blade broadhead arrow—is perched on the dash between us. It looks like you could shoot through a goddamn mountain with it.

“That’ll bury up in you and kill you dead,” Phil says...

When the first Japanese woman to win the Miss International title in 52 years, Ikumi Yoshimatsu, refused to go to work for any mafia-connected talent agency, she found out that standing up for the right thing is a sure way to get knocked off your throne...

It was bad enough when the Olympic flame went out and had to be relit with a disposable lighter rather than the official backup flame, and even worse when a torchbearer managed somehow to set himself on fire in the Siberian city of Abakan.

But perhaps the low point in what has seemed less like an Olympic torch relay than an exercise in ineptitude and misfortune came earlier this week when one of the runners carrying the torch to the Sochi Games had a fatal heart attack while attempting to walk his allotted distance, about 218 yards...

The new web series "Alpha House" puts a comedic spin on politics in the era of tea party conservatism with a story about four Republican lawmakers who work and live together on Capitol Hill. Jeffrey Brown talks to "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau, the creator behind Amazon's first original streaming series...

hen I heard late last week that Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander—a Republican who was apoplectic about Harry Reid’s changing the Senate’s hoary filibuster rules—had said the majority leader should have the words “The End of the Senate” etched on his tombstone, I imagined what Reid’s reaction would be: a broad, wry smile.

In covering Reid for more than 25 years, I have seen that smile so many times. Reid is the most unconventional of politicians, one who cares little about public perception and delights in infuriating the opposition...

Scandals and conflicts obscured one of the most extraordinary achievements of the Space Age...

One crisp March morning in 1969, artist Paul van Hoeydonck was visiting his Manhattan gallery when he stumbled into the middle of a startling conversation. Louise Tolliver Deutschman, the gallery’s director, was making an energetic pitch to Dick Waddell, the owner. “Why don’t we put a sculpture of Paul’s on the moon,” she insisted. Before Waddell could reply, van Hoeydonck inserted himself into the exchange: “Are you completely nuts? How would we even do it?”

On most Wednesdays, the Pope gives a general audience, and this one was packed. It was a balmy October morning, and more than a hundred thousand pilgrims, tourists, and Romans had funnelled into St. Peter’s Square. It was the first of three large gatherings Pope Francis presided over that week for a celebration of the family during the Catholic Church’s “Year of Faith.”Wooden railings imposed order in the square. I was about thirty yards from the Pope. In front of me were a pair of Vatican ushers in white tie and tails, several clergy, a short man in a yarmulke, and a handsome couple holding hands. Beyond them, Francis, seventy-six years old, in his stark-white cassock and skullcap, seemed energized by the festive crowd. A large man with a ready smile, he read from a brief text in Italian, but with fervor. “What kind of love do we bring to others? . . .

Legendary journalist Bill Moyers warns about the devastating impact of dark money and voter suppression...