Automattic

Between reliable traditional remedies for malaria and diabetes to used motor oil dressed up as an immune booster, Ghana’s herb market generates millions annually and provides 70% of Ghana’s citizens with most of their healthcare. Regulators are trying to deal with the massive scale of its herbal drugstores, clinics and claims without destroying the system.

Alex Tizon investigates a bizarre missing persons case. Eva Holland goes snowshoe-to-shoe with some of Alaska’s boldest babes. And newly minted memoirist Blair Braverman talks about her writing process and her team of sled dogs.

Something is driving female inmates at the California Institution for Women to attempt suicide at a rate five times higher than the state and national averages. Prevention is not a priority.

In their “How to Plot a Novel” package this week, New York magazine explores the inner workings of fiction from every angle. Christian Lorentzen analyzes how story works and affects readers. Boris Kachka provides an encyclopedia of every possible kind of plot, a history of plot, and a piece about computer mapping of story plots. […]

The United States has spent more than $1 trillion since 9/11 to protect our country and respond to acts of terrorism. Brill examines what we’ve done right, where we’ve gone wrong, and the number of security gaps we still need to fill.

Women perform so many of the essential duties that compose modern bureaucracy. It’s about time the subset of American fiction you might call “office literature” started to reflect that.

The social media company’s free-speech roots, coupled with an overwhelmingly white male leadership that was blind to the problem, led to total paralysis when it came to fixing its troll problem.

“Childbirth is not empowering. It’s grisly, frightening, and astonishing stuff.” Sarah Blackwood pushes back against the moralizing effect of birth stories.

Between the drug trade, immigration, Border Patrol pursuits and poverty, paramedics in the border town of Laredo, Texas get little rest but lots of respect. Law requires medics treat anyone in need, so here among the cactus and mesquite, “Border Patrol agents get spit as a topping at a local takeout joint; paramedics get discounts.”

A growing body of research is changing the way scientists think about symbiotic forest fungi, and revolutionizing our understanding of plant communication, cooperation and friendship.