Shortly before leaving Goldman Sachs, Sergey Aleynikov downloaded around 32mb of source code from their high-frequency stock-trading system. Even as he was sent away for an eight year bid in federal prison, no one seemed to fully understand exactly what he did.

One reason the Tea Party's patriotic political statements are so taupe is that they mirror the religious rhetoric, which is high on generalizations about God and low on nuance and complexity and conflict. Go ahead, replace "constitution" and "patriotism" with "God" and "faith" in some tea party speech sometime—it's not as wacky as it should be.

How Chicago is key to a business moving tons of drugs for billions of dollars.

It mostly had to do with Patch, the executive’s hyperlocal and unprofitable baby.

A jailhouse interview with Vladimir Putin’s rival at the very end of his decade behind bars.

How Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, all nine-sixteenths of a second of it, changed TV, the internet, and American culture.

Trying to understand the appeal of Eve Online.

The road to Lhakpa Sherpa’s seventh potential summit​ has been nothing if not complicated.

The state attorney, who prosecuted Marissa Alexander and failed to convict George Zimmerman, has put hundreds of children behind bars.

An annual re-enactment drags America’s history of racist violence into the light.

An attempt at writing about the football coach.

Browsing the stacks with The Washington Post’s Michael Dirda.

How an obscure Australian judge and a hard-charging lawyer put the S&P on trial for the global financial collapse.

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

One year before his death, Mickey Mantle describes a life of drinking.

Riding along on the Lunch Express.

Inmates work for hours each day and yet have no labor rights.

“You probably don’t believe me, but I didn’t kill Harry.”

For a time, NGOs thought they’d eradicated the disease. But now it’s back.

“The whole thing has a sort of Taylor Swift-meets-jihad feel.”

How automated ‘execution algorithms’ are taking the world’s markets on a wild ride that few economists can even understand, much less control.

As “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” comes to an end, a conversation with gay servicemen past and present.

An oral history of The Right Stuff.

Tracing the steps of migrants from the Middle East and Africa to the Kent countryside.

Meet a man who could be called the “Hillaryland Whisperer.”