Three primary reasons: A desire for vengeance, the sanitization of executions and, ironically, the reliability of DNA evidence.

He came home from Vietnam, wrote the novel that became Full Metal Jacket, was nominated for an Oscar and riding high. Then he got thrown in jail for stockpiling stolen library books, started drinking, cut off his friends and fled to a remote Greek island. He never made it back.

With Osama dead, U.S. intelligence is zeroing in on the remaining most dangerous terrorists alive, and one man is at the top of the list. Of the eighteen terror attacks attempted in the United States over the past two years, Anwar al-Awlaki’s fingerprints are on eight of them. The moderate turned radical is eloquent, he is popular— and he’s American.

From the proto-bleep to meta-bleep: how the US government protects us from the profane.

A profile of the D.O.C., the rapper’s rapper, who ghostwrote for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

“Electorates turned with special venom against parties offering what was in effect a milder version of the economic consensus: free-market capitalism with a softer edge. It’s as if the voters are saying to those parties: what actually are you for?”

On Lucille Miller, who in San Bernadino in 1964 was convicted of burning her husband to death in his Volkswagen.

A mid-boom critique of New York City’s high-priced, mostly glass condo buildings.

How a group of 17 trans athletes came together last November to make history.

In 1986, two lovebirds busted out of a coed prison in a hijacked helicopter. They’ve been trying to escape ever since.

How phone phreakers, many of them blind, opened up Ma Bell to unlimited free international calling using a technical manual and a toy organ.

Booze, sex, and the dark art of dealmaking in China.

The story of a high school star who died minutes after hitting a game-winner to end an undefeated season, and the family and friends he left behind.

Maurice Spagnoletti was hired to clean up one of the island’s largest banks. He found fraud, waste, and executives performing Santeria rituals in the conference room. Then he was killed on his way home.

In the midst of a tribal burial, Jim Thorpe’s third wife burst in to remove his body, setting in motion a decades-long battle over the Native American athlete’s final resting place.

Not long ago the idea of repairing the brain’s wiring to fight addiction would have seemed far-fetched. But advances in neuroscience have upended conventional notions about addiction—what it is, what can trigger it, and why quitting is so tough.

Students come from around the world to struggling Redding, California, where the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry promises to teach them to perform miracles.

Bennington College in the 1980s was a hothouse of sex, drugs, and future literary stars—among them, Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jonathan Lethem. Return to a campus and an era like no other.

Baruch Vega ran a scheme that ensnared Colombian cocaine kingpins and gave him a life of luxury. Then one put a price on his head.

Myth, storytelling, and lore in the most disappointing clubhouses of America’s pastime.

Four years ago, Dominique Jones got out of prison and learned to rap. Today he is, by many metrics, the most popular rapper in the world.

The clock is a useful social tool, but it is also deeply political: It benefits some, marginalizes others and blinds us from a true understanding of our own bodies and the world around us.

Conservationists saw the 6-year-old brown bear as a symbol of hope. Villagers saw him as a menace. Then he turned up dead.