April 26, 2017

What Bullets Do to Bodies

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By Jason Fagone

April 26, 2017
The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront every day.
Photographs by Finlay Mackay

What Bullets Do to Bodies

The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront everyday.

By Jason Fagone
Stories that stay with you.

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This is how the next World War starts

With one miscalculation, by one startled pilot, at 400 miles an hour. And now that Russia is determined to destabilize the West, this scenario is keeping the military establishment up at night.

By David Wood

The Blow-It-All-Up Billionaires

When politicians take money from megadonors, there are strings attached. But with the reclusive duo who propelled Trump into the White House, there’s a fuse.

By Vicky Ward

The Untold Pre-History of the Clarence Thomas Hearings

“Sexual harassment” wasn’t even a term until 1975.

By Michael Hobbes

Revenge of the Lunch Lady

How an unassuming bureaucrat outsmarted Jamie Oliver and pulled off an honest-to-god miracle in one of America’s unhealthiest cities.

By Jane Black

Hooked for Life

Inside the NFL’s tobacco-style strategy to hook your kids.

By George Dohrmann

The Future of America Is Being Written in This Tiny Office

It’s time to get interested in what Hillary’s policy team is up to.

By Jonathan Cohn
“I looked around at our whole family, and the kids running around, and I thought, ‘I’m never going to have this,’ and I started to cry.”

Together Alone

The epidemic of gay loneliness.

By Michael Hobbes

Is Ivanka For Real?

One of the greatest enigmas of 2016, explained.

By Hannah Seligson

Sandra Bland Died One Year Ago

And since then, at least 810 people have lost their lives in jail.

By Dana Liebelson & Ryan J. Reilly

Sad!

These three campaign gurus for Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have had some time to reflect on this nightmare of a campaign. And do they ever have stories to tell.

By Sam Stein

Meet the Ungers

Several decades ago, 229 men and one woman were convicted of terrible crimes. They thought they were going to die in prison. But then, many years later, in a nerve-wracking experiment, they received an unimagined second chance.

By Jason Fagone
“Do you have any idea how much we earn off migrants? Drugs are less profitable.”

The 21st Century Gold Rush

How the refugee crisis is changing the world economy.

By Malia Politzer and Emily Kassie

Trump at War

How the military is preparing for the possibility of a wild card in the Situation Room.

By Andy Kroll

Drugs You Don’t Need for Disorders You Don’t Have

Inside the pharmaceutical industry’s campaign to put us all to sleep.

By Jonathan Cohn

The Myth of the Ethical Shopper

We’re still trying to eliminate sweatshops and child labor by buying right. But that’s not how the world works in 2015.

By Michael Hobbes

The Lost Girls

One famous band. One huge secret. Many lives destroyed.

By Jason Cherkis
“If you wear a Trump hat in many places, you might as well be wearing a swastika.”

My Journey to the Center of the Alt-Right

I went to a white nationalist ethnostate in Indiana. I got bounced from a secret meeting in D.C. I spent weeks figuring out how hate gurgles up from the nastiest recesses of the Internet. And I’m sorry to report that unconscionable racists will be a force in American politics well beyond November 8.

By Luke O’Brien

How Mark Zuckerberg Should Give Away $45 Billion

It’s complicated.

By Michael Hobbes

American Electoral

Seven crucial days on the campaign trail.

By Jack Hitt & Kevin Baker

‘I Woke Up In a Parallel Universe’

Six months ago, the worst thing that ever happened to me was the biggest news on the internet. Now…

By Jackie Fuchs

Love in the Age of Big Data

Scientists believe they’ve discovered a simple formula for happy relationships. Reader, I tried it.

By Eve Fairbanks
“I did flash a camera below her skirt as she stood next to me. It was intended for shock value only.”

Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream

Why some women in national parks and forests have a tougher time than women in the military.

By Kathryn Joyce

They Burn Witches Here

And then they upload the photos to social media. A journey to an island caught between the ancient world and 2015.

By Kent Russell

Instruments of Oppression

Thousands of rape victims around the world undergo grisly and unsafe abortions because of U.S. policy. Obama could change this with a single executive action. Why hasn’t he?

By Laura Bassett

Scenes from a Marriage

The worst relationship between a U.S. President and an Israeli Prime Minister ever ... as autopsied by the people closest to them.

By Tal Shalev & Amir Tibon

Lagarde-ian of the Galaxy

The first female chief of the IMF on the Greek meltdown, a historic refugee crisis and one thing Hillary Clinton has in common with an “old crocodile.”

By Isaac Chotiner
“Doctors would be offered paid speaking fees based on the number of Risperdal prescriptions they wrote.“

America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker

Over the course of 20 years, Johnson & Johnson created a powerful drug, promoted it illegally to children and the elderly, covered up the side effects and made billions of dollars. This is the inside story.

By Steven Brill

Mothers of Isis

Their children abandoned them to join the worst terror organization on earth. Now all they have is each other.

By Julia Ioffe

Stop the Madness

There’s a miraculous new treatment for schizophrenia that could transform the way we treat mental illness. And then there are the terrible reasons why most medical professionals have never heard of it.

By Jonathan Cohn

Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia

Home to one of the most brazen, deadly corporate gambits in U.S. history.

By Mariah Blake

Cruel and All-Too-Usual

A terrifying glimpse into life in prison—as a kid.

By Dana Liebelson

His Town

Yousef Al-Otaiba is the most charming man in Washington: He’s slick, he’s savvy and he throws one hell of a party. And if he has his way, our Middle East policy is going to get a lot more aggressive.

By Ryan Grim and Akbar Shahid Ahmed

“Everything Was New and Pretty Wondrous”

A long time ago (last week) in a city far, far away (Baltimore), Alice Bowman guided the most ambitious space mission in a generation. Here, she explains what it’s like to glimpse the edge of the solar system.

By Rachel Morris

Let’s Go Full Crocodile, Ladies

A documentary that disappeared more than 40 years ago—available to everyone for the first time here—is a gift to modern-day feminists. It’s belligerent, it’s hilarious, and it reveals exactly what the Clinton campaign is missing.

By Rebecca Traister

The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp

What the future of low-wage work really looks like.

By Dave Jamieson

The Human Body is a Miracle, the Human Body is a Curse

The potential Olympian whose brain is at war with her body.

By Duncan Murrell

What is Highline?

Let us explain.

By Greg Veis and Rachel Morris