For decades, flying saucers were a punch line. Then the U.S. government got over the taboo.

For one writer, “Hot Vax Summer” is a slow climb.

Why now is the time to rethink COVID safety protocols for children—and everyone else.

Why did Christie Smythe upend her life and stability for Martin Shkreli, one of the least-liked men in the world?

Finding the author of Pictures for Sad Children.

The story of imprisoned boxer James Scott, who contended for the light heavyweight title by staging fights inside Rahway prison.

Lance Butterfield was the captain of the football team, had a 4.0 GPA and a girl he loved. It wasn’t enough for his dad. And then his dad became too much for him.
Part of our guide to Skip Hollandsworth’s true crime writing at Slate.

Thomas Sweatt torched D.C. for decades and was finally jailed for killing one person. During a year-long correspondence from prison with a reporter, he confessed there were more.

In 2017, the Hall of Fame Louisville coach’s career collapsed under a string of scandals, leading to his firing from the school he had coached for 16 years. Now, Pitino is finding himself in Greece, coaching Panathinaikos, working for a self-styled Bond villain, and enjoying a new chapter of his life.

In the years before World War II, Zacharewicz shined at Cannes and was wooed by Samuel Goldwyn but when the Nazis occupied Poland, he was sent to Auschwitz for defending his Jewish countrymen: “For him, the choice was easy.”

“We are invited to listen, but never to truly join the narrative, for to speak as the slave would, to say that we are as happy for the Civil War as most Americans are for the Revolutionary War, is to rupture the narrative.”

The case for coaches in professions other than music and sports. Like medicine, for example:

Since I have taken on a coach, my complication rate has gone down. It’s too soon to know for sure whether that’s not random, but it seems real. I know that I’m learning again. I can’t say that every surgeon needs a coach to do his or her best work, but I’ve discovered that I do.

On a little-known statistic that tracks the movement of America’s population by searching for its balance point.

How a financial advisor for NHL players may have orchestrated a massive fraud.

How cable sports channels extort hundreds of dollars per year out of every cable subscriber for programming that less than 10% regularly watch.

Departing Marrakech by car with a plan to record music for the Library of Congress.

A case for why race has been the real story of the Obama presidency all along.

How the island paradise of Seychelles became a magnet for money launderers and tax dodgers.

Shirley Dygert had never jumped before. Dave Hartsock jumped for a living. Neither of them knew what to expect when the parachute failed.

The story of a naïve fisherman, a boat headed for Spain and 1.5 tons of cocaine.

Sexism and harassment in the freethought community and its implications for atheism’s future.

Posing for family survival in a society that values boys over girls.

How Bernardo Provenzano, “boss of all bosses of the Sicilian Mafia” and fugitive for more than 40 years, got caught.