On October 17, 1973, John McClamrock was paralyzed playing high school football. Doctors doubted he would make it through the night. But he and his mother refused to give up—for more than three decades.

The story of the loneliest whale in the world.

As mass detentions and surveillance dominate the lives of China’s Uyghurs and Kazakhs, a woman struggles to free herself.

The origin story of a now-ubiquitous celebration.

A year of isolation made me consider all the casual, unwanted touch women endure — and why it’s so hard to refuse it.

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

On Bill May, considered to be the greatest male synchronized swimmer who ever lived, and his long quest for Olympic gold.

Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system.

What if people don’t just invent medical symptoms to get attention—what if they feign oppression, too?

She escaped a crazed psychopath at 16. Decades later, as the BTK serial killer terrorizes Wichita, she has to run for her life again. The identity of her tormentor is too chilling to believe.

The author teaches a college class about what it means to be white in America, but interrogating that question as a black woman in the real world is much harder to do.

In a Plano bowling alley one night, Bill Fong came so close to perfection that it nearly killed him.

A Manson-contemporary cult group rises out of a jug band, builds a fortress in the Boston ghetto, bullies control of a community newspaper, swallows a successful actor, fractures, splits for California, and attempts to describe to the reporter the enigma that is Mel Lyman.

The assumptions made by public officials, and the choices made by media, too often backfired.

Love, loss, and life at 93.

Serial arson in rural Virginia: a love story.

Could the pandemic teach us why our sense of smell matters?

Trump transformed immigration through hundreds of quiet measures. Before they can be reversed, they have to be uncovered.

Outrageous lies destroyed Guy Babcock’s online reputation. When he went hunting for their source, what he discovered was worse than he could have imagined.

A decade ago, scientists worried the lion could go extinct in Kenya by 2020. But today the area’s lion population is thriving thanks to an extraordinary group.

Using several email addresses and a lot of exclamation points, teenager Jonathan Lebed worked finance message boards in the morning before school and made almost a million bucks. Then he made the head of the S.E.C. look like a fool.

His body wrecked by ALS, the author’s father insisted that his death, like his life, was his to control.

An American family’s struggle for student loan redemption.

His verbal stumbles have voters worried about his mental fitness. Maybe they’d be more understanding if they knew he’s still fighting a stutter.