In 2003, a man robbed a bank with a bomb around his neck. It exploded shortly thereafter, taking his life and leaving authorities to try to figure out who had put it there.

On the legal and practical details of the drone strikes that killed New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki and later, accidentally, his sixteen-year-old Colorado-born son.

Unpacking a false confession 20 years later.

Following a lobster from sea to table.

A bullfighter’s comeback after a brutal goring.

On the troubled, legendary Deschutes River fly-fishing guide.

A move to Los Angeles and a foray into the bourgeoisie.

How Craig Venter’s bugs might save the world.

What happens when top universities focus on careers rather than minds.

A sociobiologist on how we evolved into artists.

On a movement divided.

Nicky Louie and the Ghost Shadows.

A physicist remembers working on the Manhattan Project.

She stumbled into communist circles, and it nearly derailed her career.

The Maryland man who houses antique feminine hygiene products.

On the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, women express themselves through fierce short poems.

How pop-up tax preparers make billions off the poor.

On Dooce.com founder Heather Armstrong.

A dispatch from the pandemic under Governor Kristi Noem.

How a tattooed video store clerk with a history of drinking and drug use ended up at an Islamic self-help class leading to the birth of ISIS.

A former student and high school coach travel to California to kidnap the coach’s daughter, an adult film actress.

The United States fights wars it can’t win using soldiers it doesn’t know.

How Google’s utopian/dystopian plan to scan the world’s books failed and the Harvard-led team that’s picking up the pieces.

The underground routes by which drugs enter the U.S. from Mexico, and the officials who’ve found it almost impossible to curb their construction.