“The vegan wars are not really about veganism at all, but about how individual freedom is coming into conflict with a personal and environmental health crisis.”

The internet is changing everything we thought we knew about the value of stuff—from stocks, to flying cherub art, to cats with Pop-Tart bodies.

Steven Carrillo’s path to the Boogaloo Bois shows the hate group is far more organized and dangerous than previously known.

He’s their hero, but he’s also their soulmate, the one person in the world who understands them. That’s why Stephen Wesley and the legions of fans like him can’t get enough of the Mountain Goats. And that burden is crushing Darnielle.

On the passionate relationship between fans and John Danielle of the Mountain Goats.

“I don’t know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I’ve been there—and back. I guess the audience feels it along with me. They can’t help it. Sentimentality, after all, is an emotion common to all humanity.”

The author comments on the medium of the graduation cliché while still advancing it:

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about "teaching you how to think". If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think.

Last April, the District built a secret disaster morgue, assembled an army of volunteers to staff it, and trained people who had never previously seen a dead body to care for the dead. This is the story of the morgue—and the quiet force of civil servants tending to everyone we’ve lost to Covid.

A day after swimming in an Arkansas water park, Kali Harding was diagnosed with a brain-eating amoeba that kills 99% of the people infects. This is the story of how she survived.

With three shows currently in production, Ryan Murphy, creator of Glee and American Horror Story, is one of the few show runners whose name commands an audience.

“She taught me the tricks of trimming. She taught me to smile when my back ached. She taught me some Bengali words. Sab bhalo. It is all okay.”

Walter Isaacson’s book is long, dull, often flat-footed, and humorless. It hammers on one nail, incessantly: that Steve Jobs was an awful man, but awful in the service of products people really liked (and eventually bought lots of) and so in the end his awfulness was probably OK.

Gaile Owens was a churchgoing mother of two boys in suburban Memphis. Now she’s the first woman sentenced to die in Tennessee in nearly 200 years. The jury never heard her whole story; this is it.

She entered the national spotlight after she live streamed the death of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, who was shot by police during a traffic stop. This is Diamond Reynolds’s life today.

The creators of This is Spinal Tap, the most influential mockumentary ever made, have been paid almost nothing. Now they are suing for $400 million.

After decades at the fringe, conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones helped usher a president into office. Now, the only person standing in Jones’ way is Jones.

The former NHL tough guy tells his story of head trauma, depression, and his search for peace.

I don’t want to die. But, you know, nothing is for certain. And I’m tired of keeping quiet.

For years, the elusive singer-songwriter has been working, at home, on an album with a strikingly raw and percussive sound. But is she prepared to release it into the world?

Two men died of meth overdoses at the home of a West Hollywood political donor. Dark conspiracy theories abounded— but the truth is even darker

A shoot-out at a Big Bend ranch captured the nation’s attention: first as an alleged ambush by undocumented migrants, then as a fear-mongering hoax. The real story is much more mysterious.