Genius Unbound

Behind the doors of Los Angeles’ infamous Cecil Hotel lies a history of unexplained deaths, bizarre tragedies, and notorious serial killers. Bob Cyphers explores its dark past in this excerpt from California: Surf, Sand & Murder....

Discovering aphantasia can explain a lot about how your mind works, but not everything. Author Andrea Thorfinson explores what aphantasia affects, what it may not, and why different doesn’t have to mean incapable.

Will Johns reflects on growing up in the shadow of rock-and-roll history, his complicated musical inheritance, and how the blues became a source of identity, survival, and transformation.

Fourteen-year-old Jimmy Gilmore disappeared from his Baldwin Park home in 1962. More than twenty years later, a renovation revealed the disturbing truth: he had never gone far at all.

Former detective and forensic investigator Steve Rush explains how real-world knowledge, careful research, and the smallest details can make crime fiction feel authentic.

When true crime focuses on the mystery, the victim can disappear behind it. Alexandra Kitty’s work on the murder of Carol Jenkins asks whose stories get remembered—and whose are too easily forgotten.

A childhood love of the Beatles eventually led Andrea Thorfinson from Abbey Road to Liverpool and even gave a meditation book its unlikely title.

One murder case led to an exoneration—and then to another man spending 15 years in prison. Steve Scarborough examines the Anthony Porter case and the questions it raised for him about evidence, advocacy, and wrongful convictions.

Learning to recognize dangerous behavior doesn’t have to make the world feel more frightening. Tye Holand’s Red Flag Ready explores how awareness, boundaries, and trusting your instincts can help you move through it with greater confidence.

Before bootleg records became an underground industry, two Los Angeles music fans pressed an album they weren't supposed to have—and changed record collecting.