Seyward Darby

An ode to some of the world’s most misunderstood urban spaces: Ever since ancient Uruk, the world’s first major city, founded around 4000 BC in what is now Iraq, alleys have served as a borderland between private and public life. Uruk’s covered lanes, no more than eight feet wide, offered respite from the sun when residents walked […]

Esther Lee’s physical therapy work is described by athlete clients like the Williams sisters and Shaun White as life-changing, going beyond muscles and into matters of the soul. Now, facing down death, Lee is learning to look within, too: Not long after Esther began working with the Williams sisters, Serena was hospitalized for a pulmonary […]

An epic three-part series documenting how Tucker Carlson became America’s most racist cable TV host, and the heir apparent to Trumpism: Like Mr. Trump, he is a winking pugilist who rails against elites even as he shapes a movement. Mr. Carlson likes to address his audience directly: “You” are decent, generous, deserving. “They” — the […]

Marjorie Dannenfelser has dedicated her entire career to banning legal abortion in America. She’s now on the verge of winning. The tactics it took to get here were ugly, and often vengeful. What’s more, they were — and are — based in no small part on a visual lie: An 18-week-old fetus does not, in […]

Rebecca Traister skewers national Democrats for failing time and again to say and do the right thing when it comes to reproductive rights, contributing to the moment at which America now finds itself — on the doorstep of Roe v Wade’s reversal: Schumer and Pelosi’s bizarre assertion that this looming rollback of rights was emblematic […]

Author Mattie Kahn’s relative is believed to be the first Jewish person killed by the Nazis. She’s known the story of his death for as long as she can remember, but she wanted to learn the story of his life, so she went looking for it: A slogan can’t bring about redemption. In searching for […]

For 41 years, Washington City Paper has been one of America’s essential alt-weekly publications and a launchpad for some of the finest journalists of their generation, including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Katherine Boo, Jason Cherkis, and David Carr (RIP). This week it publishes its last-ever print edition — don’t worry, it will continue to run online — […]

A Harvard-trained lawyer was convicted of committing bizarre home invasions. Psychosis may have compelled him to do it. But in a case that became a public sensation, he wasn’t the only one who seemed to lose touch with reality: As suddenly as the Peeping Tom incidents started, they stopped. “It was about the same time […]

A historical deep dive into abortion in America in the 19th century, when the practice was legally and morally acceptable: Abortion was so frequent, according to one doctor, that “it [was] rare to find a married woman who passes through the childbearing period, who has not had one or more.” Women spoke of it casually. […]

Three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964, on the heels of the torching of a local Black church — but you’d never know it if you visited the town’s official historical society. Enter the unofficial tour guides of Philadelphia, including author Ko Bragg’s stepfather, Obbie Riley: Obbie is of the opinion […]