Seyward Darby

Bong Joon-ho’s work reflects anxieties he feels every day—about the climate crisis, the widening income gap. “My films generally seem to have three components: fear, anxiety, and a kekeke sense of humor,” he says, using the Korean equivalent of “ha-ha.” “Humor comes from anxiety, too,” he adds. “At least when we laugh, there’s a feeling that […]

The long, loving search for Betsy, bovine escape artist.

A recent rule change allows American-born baseball players to go pro in Mexico—and they’re fielding a familiar backlash.

So much of the American story—as it actually happened, but also as it is told, and altered, and forgotten, and, eventually, repeated—feels squeezed into the vast contradiction that is the modern Black Hills. Here, sites of theft and genocide have become monuments to patriotism, a symbol of resistance has become a source of revenue, and […]

Lori Sally’s sister Sam moved to Syria to live under ISIS. Can she ever forgive her?

How does a woman from Arkansas, a woman who used to wear makeup and take selfies and wear flip-flops, end up dragged across the border into a war zone by her fun-loving husband? How do you grow up in the United States of America, surrounded by Walmarts and happy hours and swimming holes, and end […]

LFO’s breakout song is remembered today primarily as an ode to Abercrombie & Fitch and the girls who wore it. But there’s a deeper story behind the light-hearted song—one that includes tragedy and paints a picture of what music was like at the turn of the century.

A Texas con artist made millions promising prisoners’ families the thing they wanted most: To bring their children home.

For eight hours last fall, Paradise, California, became a zone at the limits of the American imagination—and a preview of the American future.

A dispatch from CrimeCon, where families and victims of violence collide with the public’s obsession with murder.