The Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul, Turkey has lived a long life. Known as The Sanctuary of Wisdom, it was built in the 6th century CE (532-537). During its long life, it has served as a meeting point for many of the world’s religions, standing as a globally recognized symbol

On a Wednesday afternoon in November 1970, social workers at the Los Angeles County Welfare Offices sat at their desks processing mountains of paperwork, answering phones, making small talk over coffee. Suddenly the office door flung open, disturbing the humdrum ambience of office noises and leading to an uncomfortable silence.

Before I became a permanent inhabitant of the Dark Carnival, I was like so many people on the Internet — insecure and self-loathing with a nefarious curiosity of Juggalo culture (and a hobby of projecting said insecurities onto them). I recall many nights having friends over in my stuffy apartment, parked in

**AUTHOR’S NOTE** The intention of this article is not to accuse someone of a crime, but to posit a question that deserves further inquiry. In 1995, just as the Croatian War of Independence is coming to an end, two men from the small, post-war country sit side by side on

Hell seems to be a collective assault on the American imagination — the culmination of our entire post-Columbus cultural history and political infrastructure. Ask anyone familiar with it to describe the scene and you’ll likely get the same description across the board — a furnace of torture, suffering, demons and unfathomable pain. Hell is

As the Bubonic Plague rolled across China, the Middle East, Russia and Europe from the 14th to 17th centuries, it claimed an estimated 150 million lives, along with the title of deadliest epidemic in human history. Originating in China in the 1300s, it hitched a ride on the Silk Road