Stories that stay with you

When the Punishment Feels Like a Crime

Brock Turner's twisted legacy And Michele Dauber's relentless pursuit of justice.

By Julia Ioffe

The Unlikely Upside of Cape Town's Drought

What are human beings capable of when it feels as if the world is about to end?

By Eve Fairbanks

Mike Pence’s Man in the Swamp

The vice president’s trusted chief of staff is young, handsome, talented and rich. He’s also got some skeletons.

By Vicky Ward

Jerry and Marge Go Large

Gaming the lottery seemed as good a retirement plan as any.

By Jason Fagone

The Disaster Tourist

For just $2,500, you too could be responsible for a geopolitical calamity.

By Kent Russell

Millennials Are Screwed

Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression.

By Michael Hobbes

Four Quitters Walk Into a Bar...

To swap war stories from an administration they couldn’t serve for one more minute.

By Lydia Polgreen
Photographs by Stephen Voss

And So Jedidiah Brown Gave All of Himself to the City He Loved

A new generation of black leaders confronts the anguish of activism.

By Ben Austen

Reunited

For families divided by the border, there is one place where they are allowed to come together—almost.

Documentary By Laura Gabbert
Text By Daniel Hernandez

“I looked around at our whole family, and the kids running around, and I thought, ‘I’m never going to have this,’ and I started to cry.”

Together Alone

The epidemic of gay loneliness.

By Michael Hobbes

Why America Needs Ebonics Now

When white people want to do something experimental in education, it’s called charter schools or experiential learning. When black people do it, it’s called identity politics.

By Michael Hobbes

The Super Predators

When the man who abuses you is also a cop.

By Melissa Jeltsen and Dana Liebelson

What Bullets Do to Bodies

The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront everyday.

By Jason Fagone

This is how the next World War starts

With one miscalculation, by one startled pilot, at 400 miles an hour. And now that Russia is determined to destabilize the West, this scenario is keeping the military establishment up at night.

By David Wood

“Do you have any idea how much we earn off migrants? Drugs are less profitable.”

The 21st Century Gold Rush

How the refugee crisis is changing the world economy.

By Malia Politzer and Emily Kassie

The Blow-It-All-Up Billionaires

When politicians take money from megadonors, there are strings attached. But with the reclusive duo who propelled Trump into the White House, there’s a fuse.

By Vicky Ward

The Untold Pre-History of the Clarence Thomas Hearings

“Sexual harassment” wasn’t even a term until 1975.

By Michael Hobbes

Revenge of the Lunch Lady

How an unassuming bureaucrat outsmarted Jamie Oliver and pulled off an honest-to-god miracle in one of America’s unhealthiest cities.

By Jane Black

Hooked for Life

Inside the NFL's relentless, existential, Big Tobacco-style pursuit of your children.

By George Dohrmann

“If you wear a Trump hat in many places, you might as well be wearing a swastika.”

My Journey to the Center of the Alt-Right

I went to a white nationalist ethnostate in Indiana. I got bounced from a secret meeting in D.C. I spent weeks figuring out how hate gurgles up from the nastiest recesses of the Internet. And I’m sorry to report that unconscionable racists will be a force in American politics well beyond November 8.

By Luke O’Brien

Is Ivanka For Real?

One of the greatest enigmas of 2016, explained.

By Hannah Seligson

Sandra Bland Died One Year Ago

And since then, at least 810 people have lost their lives in jail.

By Dana Liebelson & Ryan J. Reilly

Sad!

These three campaign gurus for Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have had some time to reflect on this nightmare of a campaign. And do they ever have stories to tell.

By Sam Stein

Meet the Ungers

Several decades ago, 229 men and one woman were convicted of terrible crimes. They thought they were going to die in prison. But then, many years later, in a nerve-wracking experiment, they received an unimagined second chance.

By Jason Fagone