“Tonight, across this country and on bases far afield, young American soldiers will take shifts guarding explosives. They did so last night. They will do so again tomorrow night.”
Brendan Fitzgerald
Posted inEditor's Pick
For the Living of These Days
“Every summer, locals reenact the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, where Prosecutor William Jennings Bryan remains something of a hero. I wanted to see for myself why this story still resonates.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What It Takes to Crew the Hardest Race on Earth
“Every year, ultrarunners sign up to compete in a brutal race that stretches 135 miles across Death Valley in the high heat of summer. Because of its harsh conditions, the Badwater 135 is perhaps the most intensely crewed ultra in the world, and without these dedicated support teams, for most, the race would be impossible.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What if Everything We Know About Sacagawea Is Wrong?
“A growing body of evidence suggests she might have survived into old age — which would entirely change the story of America’s most iconic Native forebear.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
When Fact-Checking Meant Something
“Some of us threw up in the mornings before sitting down at our desks. Some of us smoked too much. All of us worried. But our state of doubt wasn’t only fearful; it was also electrifying.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Painter of the Right
“Thomas Kinkade’s paintings show conservatives a world they have already won.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What I Inherited from My Criminal Great-Grandparents
“In working through the Winter case files, I often felt pinpricks of déjà vu: an exact turn of phrase, an absurdly specific expenditure.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Listening for Echoes of the Forest Grove Sound
“A physics expert and audio engineer may have solved the mystery of a strange noise that rattled an Oregon town in 2016.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Best Friend’s Murder Was a Tabloid Circus. Now, I’m Looking for the Truth.
“When Nicole DuFresne was killed in New York in 2005, the media twisted the narrative by latching onto a phrase that fell out of her mouth: ‘What are you going to do, shoot us?'”