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.

Susan Berman's life was colorful. Her death was shrouded in mystery.

"I have information that's going to blow the top off things," Susan told her.

"What do you mean?" Kim asked. "What information?"

"Well, I don't have it myself," said Susan. "But I know how to get it."

Kathie Durst’s friends spent almost twenty years hoping someone or something would catch up to Durst. They just didn’t think it would happen in the form of the murder of Morris Black.

Bobby was odd in other ways. He was a pothead—he smoked like a chimney. He had facial tics. But his strangest tendency—the thing that no one could ever fathom—was that Bobby belched. Belched and farted, actually. All the time. Anywhere. In front of anyone. Serial gas expulsion was his statement to the world, went the theory. It was his way of saying, “I’m Bobby Durst, and fuck you if you don’t like it.” That was the theory, anyway.

In Galveston, Durst made unusual friends in the seedy bars he frequented.

As the bus driver had guessed, the young black cross-dresser who rode the No. 6 and disembarked at 53rd and P 1/2 with Durst had indeed departed Galveston a few days after Morris Black's headless trunk and dismembered limbs were discovered in the bay. When I tracked down Frankie in an apartment in another Texas city this past January and asked about the timing of her departure, her bulbous eyes narrowed and she shook her head emphatically. "I'm not even gonna comment," she said quietly. "I didn't have nothing to do with it; I ain't gonna be nobody's damn witness; I'm not gonna be subpoenaed to come to no court—mm-mm! He cut that man up! First the head, then..."

On living with Durst’s abandoned furniture in Galveston.

“Are you sure he won’t mind,” I asked Klaus, suddenly hesitant. Durst’s murder trial was underway in the county courthouse a few blocks away from where we were standing. He had been charged with first-degree murder, but was claiming self-defense. I imagined Durst on the witness stand and it seemed wrong, suddenly, to take his belongings without his permission. Later, people who learned about my furniture would tell me that taking Durst’s things was wrong for other reasons. How could you? they would ask, mouths agape. He was a murderer! But I’ve never been sentimental or superstitious. More than disgusted or scared by the furniture, I was curious. But at the same time, I didn’t want to feel like I was stealing from someone—murderer or not.

The secret diary of Nina Simone.

The diary of a Scranton, PA National Guardsmen tasked with guarding the highest profile prisoner in U.S. history: a surprisingly amiable Saddam Hussein.

Is an ancient diary the key to discovering the origins of baseball?

The youngest prisoner held at Guantánamo on his seven years in detention.

Diary of a veteran gadfly.

On the last day of their junior year at Harvard, one roommate kills the other, then hangs herself.

Cuba’s wary embrace of private enterprise.

The story of William Morgan: American, wanderer, Cuban revolutionary.

The country’s uncertain future.

Witnessing an execution in war-torn Cuba.

The tale of a Cuban boxer leads a filmmaker to a larger story.

Exiled in 1962, a pair of brothers return home.

On baseball player Yasiel Puig’s escape from Cuba.

A crime novelist navigates Cuba’s shifting reality.