Ana Montes was a decorated U.S. intelligence analyst. She was also a Cuban spy.

How a Peace Corps volunteer turned a high school basketball squad into Afghanistan’s national team.

A respected anti-gang crusader shoots and paralyzes another man.

Its editors still live in different cities, still work different careers, and still treat Boing Boing as a (lucrative) hobby.

Gun violence, high school football and what coaches are doing to keep their players safe

“Yesterday I was just googling, I was going on YouTube to see how to microwave pasta.”

13 women, a months-long trial, and a jury’s choice.

An essay on meaningless work.

Christina Kim risked everything to escape North Korea’s entrenched gender violence. She almost didn’t make it.

He’s an expert on Twitter virality, but not on infectious disease. Does he do more help or harm?

He rose from poverty to fame as a marathon champion at only 23. But was his fall from a balcony outside of Nairobi murder, accident, or suicide?

Nakesha Williams resisted help from social workers, friends and acquaintances, some who only knew her as a homeless woman, and others who knew of her past.

On America’s interstates, brazen bands of thieves steal 18-wheelers filled with computers, cell phones, even toilet paper. And select law enforcement teams are tasked with tracking them down.

An essay drawn from the introduction of Davidson’s iconic book Subway, first published in 1986:

To prepare myself for the subway, I started a crash diet, a military fitness exercise program, and early every morning I jogged in the park. I knew I would need to train like an athlete to be physically able to carry my heavy camera equipment around in the subway for hours every day. Also, I thought that if anything was going to happen to me down there I wanted to be in good shape, or at least to believe that I was. Each morning I carefully packed my cameras, lenses, strobe light, filters, and accessories in a small, canvas camera bag. In my green safari jacket with its large pockets, I placed my police and subway passes, a few rolls of film, a subway map, a notebook, and a small, white, gold-trimmed wedding album containing pictures of people I’d already photographed in the subway. In my pants pocket I carried quarters for the people in the subway asking for money, change for the phone, and several tokens. I also carried a key case with additional identification and a few dollars tucked inside, a whistle, and a small Swiss Army knife that gave me a little added confidence. I had a clean handkerchief and a few Band-Aids in case I found myself bleeding.

Job Cohen, the current mayor of Amsterdam, is leading the Dutch race for Prime Minister on a platform of racial integration that could transform the relationship between European politics and immigration.

When Elysian Brewing sold itself to Big Beer, it set off a revolt among Seattle craft beer enthusiasts.

A woman posing as a non-profit worker kidnaps a formerly homeless pregnant woman and tries to claim her baby. [PART 2]

When a young author started her novel years ago, she saw it as a romance. She sees it differently now.

On the legacy of Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Johnson and her battle with the Deep South’s white power structure.

Sunken by grief, Alenka Artnik found herself alone on a bridge, contemplating suicide. Ten years later, she is the world’s greatest female freediver and getting stronger with each record-breaking plunge. How one woman emerged from mental health struggles to push the limits of the human body.

The autonomous car of the future is here:

I was briefly nervous when Urmson first took his hands off the wheel and a synthy woman’s voice announced coolly, “Autodrive.” But after a few minutes, the idea of a computer-driven car seemed much less terrifying than the panorama of indecision, BlackBerry-fumbling, rule-flouting, and other vagaries of the humans around us—including the weaving driver who struggles to film us as he passes.

A series of one-sided international love letters.

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Engineer and adventurer Richard Jenkins has made oceangoing robots that could revolutionize fishing, drilling, and environmental science. His aim: a thousand of them.

One year after a 14-year-old basketball player was killed by a stray bullet on a playground court in Queens, his friends and family still don’t have answers—only enduring anguish and a familiar feeling of grief.