Three days in the creative wilderness with Francis Farewell Starlite, the reclusive muse to Kanye West, Bon Iver and Drake.

Tina Fey, Mike Schur, and 35 more TV writers on what their characters would do in a pandemic.

Renée Bach went to Uganda to save children—but many in her care died. Was she responsible?

In an Arkansas jail with one of the America’s largest coronavirus outbreaks, prison terms become death sentences.

What kinds of space are we willing to live and work in now?

America’s poet laureate of the dick joke is taking it all in stride.

In 1989, USC had a depth chart of a dozen linebackers. Five have died, each before age 50.

A mother’s fight to save a Black, mentally ill 11-year-old boy in a time of a pandemic and rising racial unrest.

At a laboratory in Manhattan, researchers have discovered how SARS-CoV-2 uses our defenses against us.

How the President could endanger the official records of one of the most consequential periods in American history.

Many people dream of building their own home in the country, but one family finds more of a struggle than they bargained for.

While Covid-19 deaths in the United States skyrocket, Germans have managed to largely contain the damage. What do we need to learn?

Apex predators, feeding on pests and pets, teem in suburban Dallas and other American cities.

A trip to Kingston, Jamaica to track down Bunny Wailer, a reggae legend now living “in his own private Zion.”

A story of gambling addiction, in seven parts.

A cohort of journalists is drowning in burnout, trauma, and moral injury.

In the north Bronx, a small group of elite Ethiopian runners struggle to survive. The persecution they fled was far more harrowing.

After taking on gentrification in Denver, did a successful anti-gang activist become a target of law enforcement?

Although many Americans see the former police officer’s conviction as just closure, many in Minneapolis view it as the beginning of a larger battle.

How the writer Jesse Armstrong keeps the billionaire Roy family trapped in its gilded cage.

On the Camino de Santiago, a female pilgrim walks in solitude—utterly vulnerable, utterly free.

In Austin and cities around the country, prices are skyrocketing, forcing regular people to act like speculators. When will it end?

27 courses that will live on in nightmares.

Stephen Glass, the most notorious fraud in journalism, decided he would live by one simple rule: Always tell the truth. Then he broke that rule.

To this day, no one (outside of the movie's own crew) knows how the Muppets rode bicycles in The Great Muppet Caper, the classic Henson movie from 1981. In that scene, Kermit stands up on one frog-leg on the seat of his bicycle to impress Miss Piggy, and then the whole gang joins them on their bikes, doing circles and figure eights, singing “Couldn’t We Ride?” It's a wonderful piece of filmmaking, and still a complete delight to watch because the effect relied on the ingenuity and bravado of the puppeteers and crew, not CGI wizardry. Contrast the joy and ebullience of this scene to the elegant chiaroscuro slickness of the post-Henson Muppet Christmas Carol in which we see old fogies Statler and Waldorf, as the Marley brothers, floating in mid air. No viewer is impressed; no one really thinks about it at all. And that's because when a then 29-year-old Brian Henson directed that film, he threw the rules out the window. Statler and Waldorf “float” because Goelz and Nelson, the men working the old guys, were standing behind them during filming and then were removed in post production. It’s an elegant fix—a cutting of the Gordian knot—but it is a complete break with an aesthetic 35 years in the making.