The Atlantic

Alex Tizon tells the story of his family’s slave, Lola. A utusan (“person who takes commands”), Lola was given as a gift from his grandfather to his mother in 1943, when Lola was 18 years old. Lola worked — unpaid — for Alex and his family for 56 years. In a turbulent childhood where his parents were out of the house for days at a time, Lola was a constant source of love and devotion for Alex and his three siblings. In this moving piece, Alex attempts to understand his parents’ point of view, their motivations, and reconcile himself with Lola’s life of servitude.

In order to survive, Gallaudet University has to blend a diverse student body from very different backgrounds: deaf culture and hearing culture. Can football players show the school how?

Admittedly, it doesn’t take much, but Baldwin satirizes and critiques our sensitive, insensitive President with panache, raising himself to the role of America’s Deflator in Chief.

“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”

The facts on why facts alone can’t fight false beliefs.

Researcher William Kennedy, who along with Andrew Cooks, is mining data from past tragedies such as the 1917 Halifax Explosion, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina to run computer simulations studying how humans would respond after a nuclear attack on Manhattan, New York.

A profile of late author and activist Grace Paley, and her perseverance in fighting uphill political battles, on the page and in real life.

In Arctic Siberia, Russian scientists are trying to stave off catastrophic climate change—by resurrecting an Ice Age biome complete with lab-grown woolly mammoths.

Dead bodies, thieves, skulls, and historical bits of ephemera that fly out of pockets on the passage down are just some of the hidden secrets that laundry chutes reveal.

A blow-by-blow recounting of an awful, retrograde sequel.