An oral history of a family in Mexico City, in transition from poverty to the lower-middle class, as they scramble to organize the burial of a slum-dwelling aunt.

The cop says she nabbed an online sexual predator. He says he was just willing to chat whatever it took to get laid in real life. Their story, from both perspectives.

The American medical establishment has gone to extraordinary lengths—some of which read like conspiracy theory—to discredit the notion (and its most visible promoter, Dr. Atkins) that carbohydrates, not fat, are the cause of obesity. It looks like they were wrong.

The greatest writers of the nineteenth century were drawn to the North Pole. What did they hope to find there?

How the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 rippled around the world, from the battlefield of Ukraine to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to the White House.

Why would a billionaire go wear a badge and a gun in a tiny desert town? To obtain something that’s impossible to buy.

To understand the rise of Donald Trump is to understand his mentor, Roy Cohn — and the New York City establishment that aided and abetted him.

The author survives a bite by a venomous snake in a remote area of Yosemite National Park.

My leg, from toe to hip, turned black and yellow and eventually swelled to 24 inches, more than twice its normal circumference.

At 18, Katie Stubblefield lost her face. At 21, she became the youngest person in the U.S. to undergo the still experimental procedure to get a new one.

There are people of all genders and political persuasions looking to walk the plank of the good ship Reality before they’re pushed, but I’ve never met so many so transparently trying to con as many fellow travelers on their way down.

Ankle bracelets are promoted as a humane alternative to jail. But private companies charge defendants hundreds of dollars a month to wear the surveillance devices. If people can’t pay, they may end up behind bars.

It took only a handful of people to wrongly convict Ed Ates of murder. It took an army to free him from prison. Now comes the hard part.

If researchers can figure out how pigeons and rats evolve to thrive in hostile city habitats, it could help other beasts—including us—adapt to climate change.

An oil tanker was ordered to save more than 100 migrants floating in the middle of the Mediterranean. Europe didn’t want them. They couldn’t go back to Libya. How would they survive?

Until recently, it was possible to believe that there was a middle way, or to be in denial that a decisive moment would come. That’s no longer the case.

Sex in the Olympic Village.

On the people who will be sent back to a place they’ve never called home if DACA runs out.

Decades ago, a marketing stunt promised Philippine soda drinkers a chance at a million pesos. But an error at a bottling plant led to 600,000 winners—and to lawsuits, rioting, and even deaths.

In November 2019, James Le Mesurier, the British co-founder of the Syrian rescue group, fell to his death in Istanbul. What led an internationally celebrated humanitarian to take his own life?

A humble Scotsman saw something strange in the water—and daringly set out to catch it—only to have lecherous out-of-towners steal his fame and upend his quest.

Serial arson in rural Virginia: a love story.

“I know I learned to use my intelligence as a weapon to keep myself safe from racists, starting as a child, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like enough. The violence is like a puzzle with many moving parts, but the stakes are life and death.”

In 2003, a man robbed a bank with a bomb around his neck. It exploded shortly thereafter, taking his life and leaving authorities to try to figure out who had put it there.

In Afghanistan and other zones of international crisis with John Kerry:

Why, then, does Kerry bother? Why is he racing back and forth to put out the fires being set by a serial arsonist? I asked him about this on the short flight from Kabul to Islamabad. Kerry tried to put the best possible face on what he had learned. Despite the warlords in Kabul, he said, Karzai had appointed some talented officials at the provincial and district levels. “It’s a mixed bag,” he concluded gamely. Kerry knew Karzai’s failings as well as anyone, but he was not prepared to abandon Afghanistan’s president, because he was not prepared to abandon Afghanistan. But why not?

“‘If there’s anything I can do to make your trip more enjoyable, let me know.” He walked away, then he strode back to Cree 15 seconds later and whispered, making eye contact, “Anything.’”