Before I learned about beauty, I delighted in my body. I sensed a deep well at my center, a kind of umbilical cord that linked me to a roiling infinity of knowledge and pathos that underlay the trivia of our daily lives.

After the success of her novel Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen spent years trying to prove a man’s innocence. Now she’s “absolutely broke” and “seriously ill,” and her next book is “years past deadline.”

Should humans try harder to protect even wild creatures from predators and disease? Should we care whether they live good lives? Some philosophers and scientists have an unorthodox answer.

Rédoine Faïd loved the movies, and his greatest crimes were laced with tributes: to Point Break, Heat, and Reservoir Dogs. When he landed in a maximum-security prison, cinema provided inspiration once again.

For centuries, dowsers have claimed the ability to find groundwater, precious metals, and other quarry using divining rods and an uncanny intuition. Is it the real deal or woo-woo?

When a gossip rag went after the CEO, he retaliated with the brutal, brilliant efficiency he used to build his business empire.

When Brayden Bushby was charged with the death of Barbara Kentner, Indigenous faith in Canada’s legal system was put to the test.

Residents have lived near more than 100 massive petroleum storage tanks for decades, never really knowing if they’re breathing in dangerous chemicals. Now they’re fighting to find out.

Gavin McInnes used to be known as a Vice magazine co-founder with controversial political leanings and an affinity for darkly unfunny jokes. Now, he’s also known as the founder of the far-right group the Proud Boys.

How did Beebo Russell—a goofy, God-fearing baggage handler—steal a passenger plane from the Seattle-Tacoma airport and end up alone in a cockpit, with no plan to come down?

When word spreads about a 17-year-old in rural Tuscany reputed to have clairvoyant powers, she must withstand followers seeking her wisdom and officials hellbent on tearing her down.

Today, artificial intelligence and information technologies have absorbed many of the questions that were once taken up by theologians and philosophers: the mind’s relationship to the body, the question of free will, the possibility of immortality.

It seemed like an easy crime to stop: protected Indonesian rainforest, cut for coffee farms. But a globalized economy can undermine even the best-laid plans.

A profile of Christopher Soghoian whose “productions follow a similar pattern, a series of orchestrated events that lead to the public shaming of a large entity—Google, Facebook, the federal government—over transgressions that the 30-year-old technologist sees as unacceptable violations of privacy.”

He became a guru in the self-optimization scene, hobnobbing with the likes of Elon Musk. But will anyone listen to his warnings about the movement that brought him renown?

Paul was in his 80s when someone called to say she was his daughter, conceived in a fertility clinic with his sperm. The only problem? He’d never donated any.

A New Yorker who started riding during the pandemic travels to the heart of biker culture.

The school founded by evangelist Jerry Falwell ignored reports of rape and threatened to punish accusers for breaking its moral code, say former students. An official who says he was fired for raising concerns calls it a “conspiracy of silence.”

For 187 harrowing minutes, the president watched his supporters attack the Capitol—and resisted pleas to stop them.

In the “smart nation,” robot dogs enforce social distancing and an app can claim to neutralize racism. The reality is very different.

Three years after a devastating wildfire, a California community faces another crisis: PTSD. Is what’s happening there a warning to the rest of us?