A profile of Alexey Navalny, a Russian anti-corruption crusader.

On dissident filmmakers in Syria.

On the history of Earth Day and the failure of the modern environmental movement.

A new era in the search for life on Mars.

Shulamith Firestone, one of the first radical feminists, helped to create a new society. But she couldn’t live in it.

On Swedish game designer Markus Persson and his singular creation, Minecraft, which has sold over twenty million copies and earned Persson over a hundred million dollars last year.

The past, present, and increasingly optimistic future of Vice.

Robert Berman was a passionate and polarizing English teacher at the Horace Mann School. He is also accused of sexually abusing many of his devoted students.

A profile of Gina Rinehart, the richest person in Australia.

On Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, its uncanny knack for reflecting changes in Russian politics and culture, and the recent acid attack on its artistic director.

A profile of Hugo Chávez.

The science of sleeplessness.

The battle over what to do with New York City’s worst teachers.

Reinventing a once-great whisky distillery in Scotland.

France, wealth and the saga of tax exile Gérard Depardieu.

A neighborhood, a building, and a woman's precarious existence at the periphery.

"No doubt there are those who will be critical of the narrow, essentially local scope of Fatou's interest in the Cambodian woman from the Embassy of Cambodia, but we, the people of Willesden, have some sympathy with her attitude. The fact is if we followed the history of every little country in this world—in its dramatic as well as its quiet times—we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or to apply ourselves to our necessary tasks, never mind indulge in occasional pleasures, like swimming. Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?"

A caretaker becomes enmeshed in the relationships of the homeowner.

"I'd never have picked Julian out as a sensuous type if I hadn’t read Hana's diary; he seemed too busy and prosaic, without the abstracted dreamy edges I’d always imagined in people who gave themselves over to their erotic lives. And yet, because of the secret things I knew about him, I was fixated on him the whole time I watched him cook, and then afterward, while we sat opposite each other eating at the little table he pulled up to my armchair."

A profile of Dr. Oz.

“Hillary Clinton was never a shy person.”

How the United States came to spend more on defense than all the other nations of the world combined.

The rise of Israel’s far right.

Parsing the lives of middle-class twentysomethings.

On serving time for crimes not yet committed.

On the importance of the human microbiome.

A profile of Apollo Robbins, widely regarded as the world’s best pickpocket.