My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action... Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care.

A young woman’s attempt to flee from the most religiously conservative community in America, and to take her daughter with her:

The critical battleground in the War Between the Grunwalds would prove to be niddah, or “separation,” i.e., when the menstruating female is considered “impure” and kept apart from her husband. “It isn’t just your period,” Gitty says. After a woman stops bleeding, she has to wear white underwear for seven days, checking constantly to see if there’s any discharge. Should spotting occur, the woman takes her underwear to a special rabbi who examines the color, shape, and density of the stain. It is he who divines when it is safe for the woman to immerse herself in the mikvah (ritual bath) and be reunited with her husband.

On animal cremation and burial in New York:

Riding around Manhattan on a delivery run with a car full of pet cremains, it's hard not to look at the world differently. The omnipresence of pets becomes glaringly obvious, and their inevitable fate is never far from the mind. It's easy to imagine the whippet being jaywalked across Eighth Avenue getting hit by a car. The cocker spaniel on 23rd Street? A bucket of cocker bones in the making.

For at least 130 years, cabbies in London have been taking what many believe is the hardest test in the world: through a series of oral exams that takes four years to complete, they must prove that know every one of the city’s 25,000 streets, every business and every landmark.

In addition to defending child molesters, illegal gun owners, and the occasional drunk who steals a dirt bike from the pit during a motorcross rally, Jay Leiderman is one of a handful of attorneys who represents hackers. His current clients include Matthew Keys, the former Reuters social media editor who faces 87 months in prison for hacking The Los Angeles Times.

Chivers (men who read The Chive) are quick to emphasize that the website is about more than hot women. It’s a community of people who prioritize friendship and charity above all else—except, perhaps, having a good time. Chivers are veterans, first responders, Midwesterners. They might be Republicans, but you can’t say for sure because The Chive never talks about politics.

"There is a real danger here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him."

On the French urban exploration group UX—”sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself.”

Jonathan Blow is both the video game industry’s most cynical critic and its most ambitious game developer. As he finishes his indescribable game-opus, a trip inside the head of a videogame auteur.

In the remote wilderness along northern British Columbia’s Highway 16, at least 18 women have gone missing over the past four decades. Is it the work of a serial killer or multiple offenders?

Joe Howlett gave his life to save an animal that may already be past the point of no return. After ten centuries of annihilation, is there any way to undo the damage done?

These Boston high school valedictorians set off to change the world. But good grades only got them so far. Is Boston failing its brightest students? A five-part series about the students left behind.

Last fall, when the deadliest blaze in America in a century blew through Northern California, thousands of people—including those in the tiny community of Helltown—were forced to flee. This is the story of four friends who stayed to fight.

Covid-19 has revealed the depths of the nation’s rental housing crisis—but a group of Minneapolis tenants has shown that a different future is possible.

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.

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.

From a new Supreme Court ruling to a census question about citizenship, the campaign against illegal registration is thriving. But when the top proponent was challenged in a Kansas courtroom to prove that such fraud is rampant, the claims went up in smoke.

On spending your life among large felines.

Buried in media scholar Jonathan Albright’s research was proof of a massive political misinformation campaign. Now he’s taking on the the world’s biggest platforms before it’s too late.

Breaking the news of the Kennedy assassination, an oral history:

Wicker: [In the press room] we received an account from Julian Reed, a staff assistant, of Mrs. John Connally’s recollection of the shooting…. The doctors had hardly left before Hawks came in and told us Mr. Johnson would be sworn in immediately at the airport. We dashed for the press buses, still parked outside. Many a campaign had taught me something about press buses and I ran a little harder, got there first, and went to the wide rear seat. That is the best place on a bus to open up a typewriter and get some work done.

A private contractor tossed U.S. military waste in Iraq and Afghanistan into giant pits and burned it. Now soldiers forced to breathe the toxic fumes are sick or dying—and the government is using faulty science to evade responsibility.

An informational interview during which the author is advised, “Find a rich husband, and then you can work at whatever you like on the side, and it doesn’t matter, because you already have money.”

American demand for drugs gave birth to the cartel war that is paralyzing Mexico, but American guns purchased legally across the Southwest and smuggled over the border have made it staggeringly lethal.

A black 16-year-old lights a white, agender 18-year-old’s skirt on fire while riding the bus. Is it a hate crime? And what’s the appropriate punishment?

A statistics-based argument that drug pricing, not drug use or law enformencement, is the only way to predict swings in violent crime rates.