The Secretive Family Making Billions From the Opioid Crisis
Do you know that the company that makes OxyContin and reaps the billions of dollars in profits it generates is owned by one family?
I Played Youth Football for Years. What Will They Find in My Brain?
A new study from Boston University suggests that youth aged six to 12 who play football are at a higher risk for irreversible damage to their brains. Even Mike Ditka — had he a young son today — wouldn’t let him play football. “I think the risk is worse than the reward. I really do.”
The Girl From Plainville
A young woman encouraged her boyfriend to commit suicide in a series of texts and telephone calls. Was it a homicide?
The Fight of His Life
Afghan Noorullah Aminyar was a valuable ally to the American military. Now, after a failed defection attempt and three years in detention, his asylum claims rests on the argument that the U.S. has lost the war in Afghanistan.
Shot in the Dark
Spending six days in a cave without any light means hallucinations, hypothermia, and the potential for fatal falls. Why would anyone volunteer for one of the most extreme reality shows ever?
Ray Spencer Didn’t Molest His Kids. So Why Did He Spend 20 Years in Prison for It?
Ray Spencer spent nearly half his life in prison, convicted of raping his own children. It’s a crime he doesn’t remember committing, and as adults, his grown children began questioning their own memories and set out to find justice for their father.
Pet Project
The doggos of WeRateDogs have been there for us in dark times: Begun in the days after the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015, WeRateDogs is still going strong nearly two years later. It’s an eternity for a meme in Internet years, let alone dog years, but creator Matt Nelson is a college sophomore with big ambitions for his brand: “If it was just cute dogs I wouldn’t have millions of followers.”
Hunting Child Predators With Canada’s Freelance Vigilantes
In Canada, where the sex offender registry and convicted criminals’ names are private, a movement of “creep-hunters” has taken justice into their own hands and built a popular network of homemade videos around public shaming. Now they’re streamlining their approach to go mainstream, but at what cost?
The String Theory
What happens when all of a man’s intelligence and athleticism is focused on placing a fuzzy yellow ball where his opponent is not? An obsessive inquiry (with footnotes), into the physics and metaphysics of tennis.
Why She’s Suing Fox News
Conservative commentator Andrea Tantaros, a former co-host of “The Five” and “Outnumbered” on Fox News, speaks out about the experiences that prompted her sexual harassment suit against the organization and its former CEO, Roger Ailes.