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Publications

The Atavist Magazine

Crime Food

A Feast for Lost Souls

In Sinaloa, Mexico, women recover the bodies of missing loved ones—and cook to keep their memories of the dead alive.

Annelise Jolley The Atavist Magazine Dec 2021 20min Permalink

History Science Food

American Hippopotamus

A hundred years ago, in the midst of an American food crisis, two spies who had once sworn to kill each other came together with a plan to feed America: hippo meat.

Jon Mooallem The Atavist Magazine Dec 2013 1h25min Permalink

Crime

The Butcher of Havana

How a drifter from Milwaukee became the chief executioner of the Cuban Revolution—and a test case for U.S. civil rights.

Tony Perrottet The Atavist Magazine Oct 2021 40min Permalink

Crime

The Snitch

In Scott Kimball, the FBI thought it had found a high-value informant who could help solve big cases. What it got instead was lies, betrayal, and murder.

Jordan Michael Smith The Atavist Magazine Jun 2021 45min Permalink

Crime

Invisible Kid

Sentenced to life in prison at 16, Adolfo Davis hoped a Supreme Court ruling would give him a chance at a new beginning. But nothing about freedom turned out as he expected.

Maddy Crowell The Atavist Magazine May 2021 40min Permalink

Best Article Science

52 Blue

The story of the loneliest whale in the world.

Read more

The Longform Guide to Sea Creatures

Leslie Jamison The Atavist Magazine Aug 2014 50min Permalink

The Lives of Others

Two women gave birth on the same day in a place called Come By Chance. They didn’t know each other, and never would. Half a century later, their children made a shocking discovery.

Lindsay Jones The Atavist Magazine Apr 2021 40min Permalink

Crime

The Gilded Age

Gold mined in the jungles of Peru brought riches to three friends in Miami—but it also carried ruin.

Scott Eden The Atavist Magazine Jan 2021 2h40min Permalink

Science Health Travel

The Secret Formula

Could shrunken heads from the Amazon hold the key to curing cancer? One man thought so—and spent a lifetime trying to prove it.

Steven Lance The Atavist Magazine Dec 2020 1h10min Permalink

History

Castles in the Sky

A found diary holds a love story—and a mystery.

Christina Lalanne The Atavist Magazine Nov 2020 30min Permalink

Media

Stranger Than Fiction

Inside the Epoch Times: How an aspiring poet in Brooklyn became a tool in a right-wing propaganda blitz linked to Falun Gong.

Oscar Schwartz The Atavist Magazine Oct 2020 50min Permalink

Crime

The Pretender

People in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, thought Lois Reiss was a nice wife and grandmother. If she had a vice, it was playing the slots. Then she committed murder.

John Rosengren The Atavist Magazine Sep 2020 40min Permalink

History

The Free and The Brave

A patriotic parade, a bloody brawl, and the origins of U.S. law enforcement’s war on the political left.

Bill Donahue The Atavist Magazine Aug 2020 40min Permalink

Best Article Crime

A Family Matter

Each year, California’s child protective services agencies remove thousands of kids from their homes. The story of how some parents decided to fight back.

Jessica Weisberg The Atavist Magazine Aug 2016 Permalink

Politics World

Do You Hear the People Sing?

Brutality and resistance on the front lines of Hong Kong’s battle for democracy.

Lauren Hilgers The Atavist Magazine Jul 2020 35min Permalink

The Long Walk

When a group of Black mothers in Ohio were told to wait for school integration, they started marching every day in protest. They kept going for nearly 18 months.

Sarah Stankorb The Atavist Magazine Jun 2020 45min Permalink

Best Article Crime

A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite

In 1980, a bankrupt gambler came up with a plan to get his money back. He built an incredibly complex bomb, one that was impossible to defuse and that only he knew how to move, and snuck it into a Lake Tahoe casino with an extortion note demanding $3 million. Part of the plan worked. Part of it did not.

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Hear Higginbotham discuss this story on the Longform Podcast.

Adam Higginbotham The Atavist Magazine Jul 2014 1h25min Permalink

History Music

The Bard

One man’s quest to save the music of the Holocaust.

Makana Eyre The Atavist Magazine Apr 2020 35min Permalink

Crime

Revive

A fatal overdose, a stunning coincidence, and a mother’s long quest to heal.

Max Blau The Atavist Magazine Mar 2020 35min Permalink

Crime

Deliverance

A telekinetic teenager became a convicted killer. Can a group of strangers prove that Christina Boyer is really a victim of injustice?

Lauren Markham The Atavist Magazine Feb 2020 50min Permalink

Barbearians at the Gate

A journey through a quixotic New Hampshire town teeming with libertarians, fake news, guns, and—possibly—furry invaders.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling The Atavist Magazine May 2018 40min Permalink

The Ghost Hunter

For hundreds of years, there were rumors of a shipwrecked treasure on the Oregon coast. But no one found anything, until Cameron La Follette began digging.

Leah Sottile The Atavist Magazine Jan 2020 35min Permalink

Health

Lost in Summerland

At the world’s largest gathering of psychics and mediums, two brothers confront a painful secret.

Barrett Swanson The Atavist Magazine Dec 2019 40min Permalink

Crime

"Your Honor, Can I Tell the Whole Story?"

To read the transcript of Erin Hunter’s trial, which runs all of 81 pages and can be digested in half an hour, is to encounter a disregard for human dignity instrumental in producing the most sprawling system of incarceration in the world.

Nick Chrastil The Atavist Magazine Dec 2019 30min Permalink

History Science

The Wild Ones

People said that women had no place in the Grand Canyon and would likely die trying to run the Colorado River. In 1938, two female scientists set out to prove them wrong.

Melissa L. Sevigny The Atavist Magazine Oct 2019 45min Permalink

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