What it takes to defect from the military state of one of the world’s youngest countries.

An investigation into America’s largest chain of psychiatric hospitals, where patients are held against their will to maximize profits.

The Harvard Law School legend has defended everyone from O.J. Simpson to Claus von Bülow. Now he’s facing his toughest case yet: his own.

ProDoula wants to revolutionize the touchy-feely doula profession — and make millions of dollars along the way.

We devote vast resources to intensive, one-off procedures, while starving the kind of steady, intimate care that often helps people more.

In Argentina, where the fútbol underworld controls everything from t-shirt vending to murder, and “rowdy gangs” have turned the stadium into a battleground.

How Barack Obama decided to green-light the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

Efraim Zuroff does not want to retire.

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

A profile of the Navy Seal who killed Osama bin Laden and came home to a life in shambles.

On Ilya Zhitomirskiy, an idealistic young developer who committed suicide 18 months after founding Diaspora, his well-publicized, open-source alternative to Facebook.

The pharmaceutical quest to give women a better sex life.

The author, an abortion counselor, was 40 and pregnant when a conflicted Catholic woman came to her clinic.

Why the head of Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey hired a former CIA agent to ruin a freelance writer’s career.

Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe build the most powerful Tea Party organization in the country. Then a feud threatened to undo everything.

Basketball on a Crow reservation and a player named Jonathan Takes Enemy trying to escape.

More than 100 years after they were discovered, we’re still looking for an answer as to why blood types exist.

The people who go missing while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and the people who attempt to identify their remains.

A pair of gamblers and a glitch too good to last.

Vivien Thomas was paid a janitor’s wage, never went to college, and still became a legend in the field of heart surgery.

The lives of Sue and Hector Badeau, who felt a calling to raise children and adopted twenty of them.

How an entire industry built itself convincing lead-paint poisoning victims to sign over settlement payments for a fraction of what they’re worth.

A small town in Nebraska promised a warm welcome to a family of Katrina evacuees. It didn’t last.

The men who say they’ll try to save the once-bustling gambling resort town.

On a local talk show, Ted Bundy’s mother speaks to the family of one of his victims.