The search for a missing soldier.

Invented in 1899, it hasn’t been improved upon since.

Hanging out with the Atomic Bombshells in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

When a random person becomes a massive meme.

How we talk about—and live with—schizophrenia.

How solitary confinement can lead to suicide.

On corresponding with the Oklahoma City bomber.

Travels through post-election America.

How populism took a continent.

On the vexed territory between aquí and allá.

Inside the New York Public Library’s archives.

How the Christian film industry works.

Who really built the first electric rock ‘n’ roll guitar?

What’s actually happening at the box office.

Public-health officials are confronting dangerous ideas as much as a deadly disease.

American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase.

Welcome to Toke-la-homa.

On trying, and failing, to qualify for the USA Olympic Marathon Trials.

Mo Pinel spent a career reshaping the ball’s inner core to harness the power of physics. He revolutionized the sport—and spared no critics along the way.

“They think of us as pests, so they are trying to drive us out of our homes, for what is the Republican drive for our self-deportation if not a plan of fumigation?”

The life and times of James McClintock, the man behind the famed H.L. Hunley who also may or may not have faked his own death.

On the holy city of Canudos, and other attempts at better living “by the dispossessed and marginalized the world over.”

Last summer, when she thought nobody was looking, Mary Bale put a cat in the trash. The act was caught on video, and Bale was quickly tried and convicted online. The aftermath of a viral crime.

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

Six months after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, a member of the Presidential commission that investigated the crash presents his personal findings.

“It’s more than soup.”