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Horseman, Pass By

Glory, grief, and the race for the Triple Crown.
The pilots who risk their lives flying tiny planes over the Atlantic

Ferry flying is a lucrative but high-risk industry. Elite pilots deliver small planes across oceans and continents - distances these aircraft were not designed to fly.
Meet the Anarchists Making Their Own Medicine

The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective is a network of tech-fueled anarchists taking on Big Pharma with DIY medicines.
The Vineyard Where Retired French Soldiers Make Wine

In Provence, Foreign Legion veterans report for duty among the vines.
Feature: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf Scientist?

Rob Wielgus was one of America’s pre-eminent experts on large carnivores. Then he ran afoul of the enemies of the wolf.
Death and Dying in the Canadian Arctic

The following is from Nowhere Magazine’s 2016 print annual. * The flight to Cape Dorset, an Inuit community on a small island in the Canadian Arctic, was due to depart in minutes, but Inuit e…
An Ohio Startup Rebuilds Lives One Piece of Fried Chicken at a Time - POLIT

A millennial entrepreneur hires from inmates and homeless people who struggle to find work even in a strong economy.
Inside the 20-year decline of Toys R Us

Cost cuts, stressed employees, intercompany rivalries, dirty floors, dusty rafters, glitchy IT, fudged metrics: The people who ran the failed toy retailer's stores know what went wrong.
The Counterfeit Queen of Soul | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian
A strange and bittersweet ballad of kidnapping, stolen identity and unlikely stardom
What a Russian Smile Means - Issue 61: Coordinates

How culture and history make American and Russian smiles different.
The Left Side of Steve Kerr’s Brain

Sammy Gelfand is the numbers guy behind the Golden State Warriors’ success. Some pretty good players help, too.
The All-American Bank Heist

Having fallen on hard times, a former football star and the pride of his small town decides to rob the local bank. His weapons of choice: Craigslist, bear mace, and an inner tube.
Jeff Pike, Texas’s Own Tony Soprano

Earlier this spring, Jeff Pike, the head of the infamous Texas-based Bandidos motorcycle club, went on trial in federal court for racketeering. Prosecutors called him a ruthless killer, the man behind one of the deadliest biker shoot-outs in American history, at the Twin Peaks…
Inside the Final Days of Robin Williams

New York Times reporter Dave Itzkoff details the beloved star’s heartbreaking decline in this exclusive excerpt from Robin, his new biography.
The Most Unlikely D.A. In America - POLITICO Magazine

He’s a biker attorney who specialized in getting small-time defendants off. He’s considered a gang member by Texas police. And now he’s the county’s chief prosecutor. Can Mark Gonzalez change the system?
The Most Unlikely D.A. In America

Can Mark Gonzalez change the system?
The Great Unsolved Mystery of Missing Marjorie West

Discover extraordinary true stories celebrating the diversity of humanity. Click to read Narratively, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Little Sunfish: The Robot That Could - Longreads

How the best robot, "Little Sunfish," helped Japanese scientists understand the scope of the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The Great High School Impostor | GQ

What Artur Samarin pulled off at a school in small-town Pennsylvania is one of the boldest hoaxes of our time.
Murder at the Alcatraz of the Rockies

The inside story of the first homicide in America’s most secure prison.
Murder at the Alcatraz of the Rockies — The Atavist Magazine

The inside story of the first homicide in America’s most secure prison.
Monsieur Bébé: The Brief, Strange Life of Raymond Radiguet

The seventeen-year-old took Paris by storm with his racy, amoral first novel. Shortly thereafter, a séance predicted his untimely death.
“The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

A recording salvaged from three miles deep tells the story of the doomed “El Faro,” a cargo ship engulfed by a hurricane.
What the Arlee Warriors Were Playing For

On Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation, basketball is about much more than winning.
After 30 years, she was about to be deported. Then, a tiny church offered h

Pretending to Be Okay

A profile of UConn basketball coach Geno Auriemma, who has not found peace despite unprecedented success.
Traffic: How Air Traffic Control Works | GQ

At any given moment there are roughly 6,000 planes on their way to somewhere over American airspace. Getting them safely down to the ground will depend upon the efforts of a small group of controllers who, nearly without fail, get the job done despite long hours, grim working…
Coronado High - The Atavist Magazine

How a group of high school kids from a sleepy beach town in California became criminal masterminds.
Gangster’s paradise: how organised crime took over Russia

The long read: Under Vladmir Putin, gangsterism on the streets has given way to kleptocracy in the state
Ball Breakers

“The reason women-only billiards tournaments exist is not because the players can’t beat men. It’s because they can.”
The Story of Dave and His Killer Bread
Dave’s Killer Bread has become a cult favorite across the nation, drawing in both health-conscious consumers and those who root for an unlikely success story. But you won’t find the full story on the bread packaging.
The Amazing Story of the Russian Defector Who Changed his Mind

The home phone of FBI special agent Michael Rochford rang in the middle of the night on August 2, 1985. He grabbed it and heard the voice of his FBI supervisor. “There’s a plane coming in, a high-level defector.” The day before, a Soviet man had walked into the US consulate in…
The Tiger Balm story: how ointment for every ailment was created, fell out
Analgesic balm in a hexagonal jar, launched in Rangoon by the Aw brothers in 1924, was a staple of Chinese families’ medicine cabinets for a generation. Today, Tiger Balm products have fans around the world, including Lady Gaga
The Daring Plan to Save a Religious Minority from ISIS | The New Yorker

When the terrorist group attacked the Yazidis, a small group of American immigrants knew they could do something.
How New Zealand made Edmund Hillary, the man who conquered Everest - SBNati
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND: WHERE THE WRITER FINDS A LOVELY CITY BUILT ON VOLCANOES, PUBLICLY LISTED PHONE NUMBERS, AND MANY SIGNS...
Meet the last practitioners of sfyria, Greece's whistling language | The Ou
On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language are holding onto their culture as it slowly dies out.
The Conqueror Who Longed for Melons - Gastro Obscura

Many Indian dishes can be traced back, indirectly, to a 16th-century, food-obsessed ruler named Babur.
An abandoned lifeboat at world’s end

Breaking news: a credible solution to the Bouvet Island lifeboat mystery has been found. See comments for 22-27 May 2011, 12 November 2011, 17-20 March & 9 April 2016, and 28 December 2023. The…
What to Do When Your Brain Insists You’re Always on a Boat - Facts So Roman

Zvonimir Orec via Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Last July, Chris Perry went on an Alaskan cruise with her family to celebrate her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. When she boarded the massive Norwegian Sun cruise ship, she felt…
The Noose Beneath the Waves

Fishing gear can pose a deadly threat to whales—and to those who try to save them.
The Long Fall of iHeart, Once the Most Powerful and Feared Player in Radio

Launched by two of the biggest names in Texas business, Clear Channel was once the most powerful—and feared—player in radio. Now rebranded as iHeartMedia, it’s on the brink of bankruptcy.
The Encyclopedia of the Missing

She keeps watch over one of the largest databases of missing persons in the country. For Meaghan Good, the disappeared are still out here, you just have to know where to look.
Twilight Of The Yellowstone Winterkeepers

With 50 years of solitude, Steven Fuller is a living legend in Yellowstone and an endangered 21st-century icon
Doctors: Christmas in the I.C.U.

There’s an illusion that if you want something enough, even something as fantastical as avoiding death, you might just get it.
Explorer: In the California Desert: Vast Darkness, Vibrant Music, an Oasis

In Wonder Valley, the silence makes its own kind of noise. And Twentynine Palms makes its own kind of music.
Revealed: The Secrets Of One Of The World's Dirtiest Banks And Its Powerful

Blatant forgery. Snarling guard dogs. Shredded evidence. An incendiary cache of leaked documents reveals the farcical scramble inside one of the world’s dirtiest banks to conceal incriminating information from US government investigators – while some of the most prestigious…
A Lonely Death

In postwar Japan, a single-minded focus on rapid economic growth helped erode family ties. Now, a generation of elderly Japanese is dying alone.
Baseball, BBQ, and Dead Ponies—A History of Fat Men’s Clubs in Texas

A peek inside the revelry and rivalry of Texas's fat men's clubs.
How an unpaid UK researcher saved the Japanese seaweed industry

After crops failed, botanist Kathleen Drew-Baker realized that nori wasn’t what it seemed.