A conversation with the legendary First Amendment attorney.

The philosopher thinks that parents of babies that have the more severe variances of diseases like spina bifida should have the right to end their child’s life “swiftly and humanely.”

Dr. Stone explains what motivates men who commit serial sexual homicide and whether or not they are born evil.

Thanks to MRI and fMRI bran scans, we now know much more about how damage to or deficiencies in certain parts of the brain may underlie “evil” behavior.

Evil is so subjective that what we perceive as evil, Islamic terrorists do not, says Stone. But we can all agree that Bernie Madoff is evil.

Some children—thankfully few—are born without a conscience or the ability to feel compassion.

We’re all guilty of a little Facebook stalking now and then, but the men Stone describes are driven to extreme lengths by their obsessions.

Psychiatrist Michael Stone explains his 22-point scale of evil, ranging from justified homicide to crimes so shocking and unspeakable they “take your breath away.”

An interview with the Columbia University forensic psychiatrist.

The famous developer of Perl talks about his work set-up, how he works best, and why he sometimes procrastinates.

“But when good taste becomes mandatory, then it’s not really good taste any more—it’s just manners,” says Wall.

The “Lord of the Rings” characters embody what Wall sees as the three virtues of good programmers: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

Programmer Larry Page offers language suggestions to amateur programmers who might not know exactly where to start.

Computer programming is a lot like writing a recipe. If you’ve read a recipe, you know what the structure of a recipe is and you can copy the format to […]

“Perl culture is a culture of fun; we really encourage that and do not think that it is in any way counter to the notion of doing good work,” says […]

Wall’s background in linguistics helped him to create a programming language that borrows bits from other languages, much like English.

Perl developer Larry Wall says that, like a human language, you can use Perl in many ways—for baby talk, grownup talk, writing poetry or plays, and even cussing.

A conversation with the founder of the Perl programming language

The Harvard economist explains why legalizing all drugs—including cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine—would be a better policy than the current prohibition.

If there were a draft, we would never have gone to war in Iraq, says the legendary journalist. The end of the draft has permitted a cowardly politics, a huge […]

Be a good listener, says the legendary Watergate reporter. “The real purpose of reporting, of journalism is to illuminate what is real, you know, real existential truth.” And that’s about […]

A reporter has enormous power to hurt people, says the veteran journalist. Therefore you’ve got an obligation to be fair, to find out the other side of the story, and […]

“Has post-Watergate been a life of hardship? Hell no. It’s been wonderful and then every once in a while you get hit in the face.”

There are news organizations that, “if they had the same kind of information that Bob Woodward and I had in Watergate would go ahead and print the stories.” But today […]

The legendary journalist isn’t concerned about the current state of investigative reporting. But he does worry that readers are less interested in serious journalism than they used to be.

A conversation with the Watergate journalist.

While the U.K. likes to pretend to have independence, the British isles are closer to rest of Europe than most like to admit.

“People are still very nationalist, and they care chiefly for their own domestic affairs,” so the challenge is to create a sense in the news coverage that their neighbor’s affairs […]

Because of the continent’s violent history, Europeans think they should know about each other. But in reality every nation is still living inside its borders.

To create a loyal audience, a network needs to respect the basic laws of journalism, be honest, be transparent, and strike a good “balance between values and opinions.”