Can a cowboy become the greatest polo player of all time?

Meditations on the myth of the voiceless.

Terrorists boarded two planes in Boston and flew them into the World Trade Center. Massachusetts zeroed in on its top airport official, who has never quite recovered.

Did people first come to this continent by land or by sea?

On the history of modern food.

On peaches.

Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11.

Fifty years ago, a police shooting set in motion a decades-long chase across the American West.

A profile of England’s pre-eminent scholar of race, culture, and nationalism.

On the rise and demise of the Segway.

A respected professor shot dead through the mansion window. A quaint New England town shaken to its core. One all-consuming obsession in Whip City.

Pedestrianism was a sport of epic rivalries, eyewatering salaries, feverish nationalism, eccentric personalities and six-day, 450-mile walks.

In 1955, just past daybreak, a Chevrolet truck pulled up to an unmarked building. A 14-year-old child was in the back.

In 1976, a school bus carrying 26 children and their driver disappeared from a small California town, capturing the world’s attention.

For centuries, everyone from archaeologists to amateurs pillaged artifacts — and human remains. Now, the FBI is cracking down on those who continue to dig.

When word spreads about a 17-year-old in rural Tuscany reputed to have clairvoyant powers, she must withstand followers seeking her wisdom and officials hellbent on tearing her down.

His almost superhuman exploits made him one of the West’s most feared lawmen. Today, the legendary deputy U.S. marshal is widely believed to be the real Lone Ranger. But his true legacy is even greater.

If you were a U.S. prison warden trying to figure out how to kill people with an electric chair in the ‘80s, there was basically one guy to call. His name was Fred A. Leuchter Jr. He ran a business out of his house in the Boston suburbs, providing consulting or execution equipment to at least 27 states between 1979 and 1990. Some of Fred Leuchter’s equipment is still in use today, which is why I wanted to talk to him.

1619, 1776, and the politics of the past

In 1970 South Central, pigeon fancying was serious business. But there’s a deeper story behind why these Black Angelenos are entering their fifth and sixth decade raising Birmingham Roller pigeons.

For some Americans, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it’s the story they want to believe.

The clock is a useful social tool, but it is also deeply political: It benefits some, marginalizes others and blinds us from a true understanding of our own bodies and the world around us.

A little alcohol can boost creativity and strengthen social ties. But there’s nothing moderate, or convivial, about the way many Americans drink today.

During the second world war, Chinese merchant seamen helped keep Britain fed, fueled and safe – and many gave their lives doing so. But from late 1945, hundreds of them who had settled in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth