A mayday call in the critical moments after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.

The shooting death of the last wild Passenger Pigeon, atomic energy, mastodon watering holes, and other footnotes in Ohio history.

Alaska brims with stories of people who vanish and are given up for dead. Once in a while, the dead return.

Three days, 64 people shot, six of them dead: Memorial Day weekend in Chicago.

A Marxist archaeologist uncovers traces of fugitive slave settlements deep in the Great Dismal Swamp.

Learning to live in Earth’s coldest conditions.

John Franzese Jr. helped send his father, notorious Colombo family mobster Sonny Franzese, to prison. Then he turned up in Indianapolis.

How the tiny town of Roundup, Montana became a hub in Amazon’s supply chain.

Filipino teachers, hired to fill historic shortages in the South and elsewhere, fight their exploitation by opportunistic recruiters.

An advertising copywriter adjusts to daily life in Paris, and works in a dysfunctional office.

Office culture in Paris held that it was each person's responsibility, upon arrival, to visit other people's desks and wish them good morning, and often kiss each person once on each cheek, depending on the parties' personal relationship, genders, and respective positions in the corporate hierarchy. Then you moved on to the next desk. Not everyone did it, but those who did not were noticed and remarked upon.

The dark and dangerous world of extreme cavers.

How child molesters get away with it.

On a 1955 ferris wheel accident.

When the Champ met Castro.

The legacy of Benihana.

A healthcare nightmare.

An essay on insomnia.

An argument for working less.

Fact-checking David Brooks.

A profile of the vice president.

As U.S. troops departed, Baghdad in ruins.

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. While on assignment for the New York Times, Anthony Shadid died today in Syria.

The hidden history of poker and crypto.

A profile of Toni Morrison.

In 1966, Anton LaVey introduced the world to the Church of Satan. The 1980s saw a “Satanic Panic” in the form of abuse charges brought against child-care workers and suburban parents. Today, the author joins a group of Satanists for afternoon tea at the church’s global headquarters in a “bland New York college town.”

An investigation into the practice of putting teenagers in solitary confinement.