Sex, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court.

Analysis of the trial from future Supreme Court justice.

Every law student knows John Brady’s name. But few know the story of the bumbling murder that ended in a landmark legal ruling.

The Supreme Court justice on gay rights, the problem with consensus, and the Devil.

In 1976, newly appointed Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens voted to reinstate capital punishment in the United States. Thirty years later, he argued that it’s unconstitutional. Here, he explains why he changed his mind.

How Chief Justice John Roberts pulled off Citizens United.

How Neil Gorsuch became the second-most-polarizing man in Washington.

On the combined force of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia, a Tea Party stalwart.

No one argues before the Supreme Court more than Tommy Goldstein.

An excerpt from Little Failure.

A trip to Azerbaijan.

Confessions of a Google Glass Explorer.

The author on his love for the Russian language.

A profile of M.I.A.

The night it all went wrong.

At age 17, Eustace Conway moved into the North Carolina woods. He hasn’t compromised since.

Ida Wood, who lived for decades as a recluse in a New York City hotel, would have taken her secrets to the grave—if her sister hadn’t gotten there first.

Matthew Weigman was blind, overweight, 14 and alone. He could also do anything he wanted with a phone. Sometimes that meant calling Lindsay Lohan. Other times it meant sending a SWAT team to an enemy’s door.

How could a one-time rising golf star be gifted with top 10 talent yet struggle to break even on the LPGA tour, possess Madison Avenue magnetism yet be such a loner? But the most difficult thing to understand is this: Why did she take her own life?

The tale of itinerant wanderer Chris McCandless. The magazine story that preceded Into the Wild.

A profile of the reclusive musician.

If Charles Brogden pilfered a kitchen, he washed the dishes and mopped the floor before he left. And the law just couldn’t seem to run him down.

Meeting Christopher Thomas Knight, a.k.a. the North Pond Hermit, who lived alone in the Maine woods for nearly 30 years.

On the mysterious life of an the isolated heiress.

Ray Bowman and Billy Kirkpatrick, who began boosting together as teenagers, were arrested only twice during their prolific partnership. The first time was for stealing 38 records from a K-Mart in 1974. The second arrest came in 1997. In between, Bowman and Kirkpatrick robbed 27 banks, including the single biggest haul in United States history: $4,461,681 from the Seafirst Bank in suburban Tacoma.

Peggy Jo Tallas, a soft-spoken bachelorette, spent much of her adult life doing two things: taking care of her ailing mother and robbing bank after bank dressed as a pudgy, bearded cowboy.

Anthony Curcio was the pride of his small town in Washington state. A former football star, he had married his high-school sweetheart and was making good money flipping houses. Then the real estate market crashed, and Curcio turned his obsessive attention to planning an ingenious heist involving Craigslist, an inner tube, and $400,000.

The robbers had a helicopter, explosives, and inside information on a $150 million cash repository. But the police were on to them—sort of.

A young man named John Wojtowicz, desperate to provide for his children and finance his lover’s sex-change surgery, attempts to rob a Chase branch in Brooklyn. The bank is surrounded almost immediately and a 14-hour standoff ensues. The story inspired Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon.

In 2003, a man named Brian Wells robbed a bank in Erie, Pa., with a bomb around his neck. Shortly thereafter, with Wells surrounded by cops and claiming he’d been forced to commit the crime, the bomb detonated, leaving authorities to piece together who had put it there. Eight years later, they’re still not entirely sure who was behind this bizarre crime, or even the true motive.

How a 24-year-old nurse discovered Vegas, high-stakes gambling, and serial bank robbery.

What the sensation of an uncontrollable itch can tell us about how the brain operates.

The shared life of Tatiana and Krista Hogan.

How some scientists are turning to connectomes—maps of the brain’s neural circuitry—to make the case for brain preservation, mind uploading, and eternal life.

Susie Mc­Kinnon cannot hold a grudge. She is unfamiliar with the feeling of regret and oblivious to aging. She has no core memories. And yet she knows who she is.

Is there really such a thing as brain death?

Eagleman, a neuroscientist, describes how groundbreaking advances in the science of brain have changed our understanding of volition in criminal acts, and may erode the underpinnings of our justice system.

Edna Kelly’s brain goes under the knife.

On the moral responsibility to break unjust laws.

An author pleas to amend his entry.

On the wonders of being an only child.

On rape jokes.

Davis was imprisoned on charges of first degree murder.

Max Soffar, who has liver cancer, has been on death row since 1981. He’s almost certainly innocent.

On the imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus.

A voting rights march, from Selma to the statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama.

Rebellious teens on the Sunset Strip.

On the “jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless” writing of Pauline Kael.

How one obscure sentence upset the New York Times.

Ripping out the guts of an “utterly preposterous document”: the Starr Report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.