A Pressidential Guide To Crisis Management

What Trump should have learned from his predecessors

Beware The Digital Cure

Tech companies are helping the government respond to the pandemic. What’s in it for them?

Culture & Critics

So Sad, Can’t Stop Laughing

The 2016 Election Was Just a Dry Run

Russia’s goal was never merely to elect Donald Trump. It was to bring down American democracy. Is Vladimir Putin poised to complete the mission he began four years ago?

The Case of the Phantom Papyrus

A renowned Oxford scholar claimed that he discovered a first-century gospel fragment whose text closely matched modern Bibles. Now he’s facing allegations of antiquities theft, cover-up, and fraud.

Operation Firstfruits

Where is the line between journalism and espionage? And what happens when your own government thinks you've crossed it?

Why Birds Do What They Do

The more humans understand about their behavior, the more inaccessible their world seems.

The Last Night Out

The virus pulled back the curtain on our fraught relationships.

The Special Child

In his unsettling trilogy about a possibly divine boy, J. M. Coetzee asks how we recognize the truth when it enters the world.

What Takes Our Breath Away

An undertaker reflects on the one thing death can’t steal: our stories.

A Motherhood Reset

How quarantining showed me what my children had been missing—and what I had, too

Robert Stone's Dark Dream of America

His novelistic ambition to define the national condition is more relevant than ever.

The Sculptor Who Made Art Move

How Alexander Calder gave objects a life of their own

The Shark and The Shrimpers

After the BP oil spill, a well-known lawyer helped land a $2 billion settlement for gulf coast seafood-industry workers, including 42,000 vietnamese fishermen. Only one problem: they did'nt exist.

The Secret of Scooby-Doo's Enduring Appeal

Why on earth has the formulaic series, which debuted half a century ago, outlasted just about everything else on television?

Childhood in an anxious age and the crisis of modern parenting

Imagine for a moment that the future is going to be even more stressful than the present. Maybe we don’t need to imagine this. You probably believe it. According to a survey from the Pew Research Center last year, 60 percent of American adults think that three decades from now, the U.S. will be less powerful than it is today. Almost two-thirds say it will be even more divided politically. Fifty-nine percent think the environment will be degraded. Nearly three-quarters say that the gap between the haves and have-nots will be wider. A plurality expect the average family’s standard of living to have declined. Most of us, presumably, have recently become acutely aware of the danger of global plagues.

“At 14, I Could've Pointed Out everybody Who Would Be Dead"

Nikki King grew up surrounded by the opioid epidemic. Now she's leading a novel and promising program to help people in remote areas.

What China Wants

Chinese leaders’ combination of superiority and insecurity is growing more dangerous. The U.S. needs a new strategy to reflect that

Being Friends With Philip Roth

During his last two decades, we spent thousands of hours in each other’s company. Ours was a conversation neither of us could have done without.

THE BRAINIEST HITTER

Can Joey Votto outsmart age?

EXILE IN THE AGE OF MODI

How Hindu nationalism has trampled the founding idea of my country

The Reigning Master of Family Drama

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film, his first set outside of Japan, showcases the great director’s signature theme.

How to destroy a government

The president is winning his war on american institutions

How to tackle a Giraffe

The planet’s tallest animal is in far greater danger than people might think. Saving it begins with a daunting act of physical courage.

The Supreme Court's Enduring Bias

Over the past half-century, siding with the powerful against the vulnerable has been the rule in almost every area of the law.

SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Opposition to water fluoridation, while often vocal, has been largely a fringe crusade. But solid evidence for fluoridation’s value is surprisingly hard to find.

Reiki Can't Possibly Work. So Why Does It?

The 20th-century Japanese healing therapy is now available in many hospitals. What its ascendance says about shifts in how American patients and doctors think about health care.

WHAT HAPPENED TO JAKE MILLISON?

WHEN A YOUNG RANCHER WENT MISSING, HIS FAMILY SAID HE’D SKIPPED TOWN. BUT HIS FRIENDS KNEW HIM BETTER THAN THAT, AND THEY REFUSED TO LET HIM SIMPLY DISAPPEAR.

IT'S ALL SO… PREMIOCRE

A guide to the new age of Potemkin luxury

The World's Favorite Drug

The dark history of how coffee took over