Every theory—from Chinese troops infiltrating the U.S. to exterrestrial healing—has an advocate at Conspiracy Con, which took place last year in Santa Clara, California. We visited with the people who devote their lives to notions the rest of us would rather ignore.

There's a conspiracy at the heart of every political thriller—from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to Oscar contenders Munich and Syriana. In the mid-1970s, the best filmmakers in America put the turmoil of that era into dark, paranoid movies about forces beyond our control. Studio 360's Derek John spoke ...

Mark Lombardi was obsessed with financial chicanery, and with drawing the lines in which power flows. When he died in 2000, he left 14,000 index cards with entries on everything from multinational corporations to arms dealers to his own friends. But why are his huge, detailed drawings so difficult to ...

Remember the old Saturday Night Live skit that asked, "What if Eleanor Roosevelt Could Fly?" Sound artist Jane Philbrick asked a question just as unlikely: "What if retired Senator Jesse Helms could recite a lesbian love poem by Gertrude Stein?" Andrew Adam Newman found out how Philbrick's quixotic project ...

Stuart Oderman was a tough kid. He ran errands for small-time bookies in Newark, New Jersey, and used to skip school to go to the movies. One day at a matinee he met a faded star of the golden age of Hollywood, and his life was never ...