Candy Darling died at 29, broke and largely uninsured, having spent most of her adult life unable to walk into certain bars without risking arrest for the dress she was wearing. She also spent those same years being photographed by Richard Avedon, cast by Tennessee Williams and mourned, when the end came, by Andy Warhol crying for the only time anyone ever saw. Two of Lou Reed's most enduring songs trace back to her specifically, and most people who know one have never heard

Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services oversees roughly six hundred children with the most severe medical needs in its entire system. When one of those children is expected to die soon and needs somewhere to spend their final weeks or months, staff there say there's only one name they think to call. For more than three decades, Mohamed Bzeek has been the only foster parent in the county willing to take children other homes won't. He's cared for more t

Werner Herzog has spent six decades making films about people who chase impossible goals in places that don't want them there: a man dragging a steamship over a mountain, conquistadors floating to their deaths on a raft in the Amazon, scientists holed up at the bottom of the world. Long before any of that, he was living the same story himself. Between finishing school and shooting his first real film, Herzog followed a girlfriend to a slum in Manchester, tried to walk into th