Why do girls around the world speak in secret languages? A peek into the secret linguistic lives of girls. By Jessica Weiss.

In the late seventeenth century, haute couture was produced by women, for women. By Joan DeJean.

She told the family of a severely disabled man that she could help him to communicate with the outside world. The relationship that followed would lead to a criminal trial. By Daniel Engber.

A journey to the heart of New Guinea’s Asmat tribal homeland sheds new light on the mystery of the heir’s disappearance there in 1961.

The Naga Sadhu are monastic, solitary and extremely harsh to even the most devout and traditional Hindus. Their severe ways have diminished their numbers to the verge of extinction.

American business meets its new master. By Barry C. Lynn.

An MTA official walked up to the inconspicuous metal gate on the Essex St. subway platform one winter day in early 2009. Around him, people milled, waiting for the train. They didn’t notice as he slid the lock and led two men down a staircase, through a passageway beneath the tracks, and to the other side.

Like IQ or EQ, there should be FQ: a freedom quotient to show how much free will we have – and how to get more.

Her name was Segen. In the early hours of the morning of June 28, 2014, she had boarded a boat in Libya with her youngest daughter, Abigail. Segen was 24, slender; Abi was not quite two years old, a frizz of hair and pudgy baby cheeks. They weren’t alone on the boat: All in, there were at least 243 people on board, crammed together, human cargo.

Beijing is blunting scrutiny of its rights record at the venue created to protect victims of state repression – the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. Its success is evidence of China’s growing ability to stifle opposition abroad.

"Atomic gardening" was introduced in the 1950s as part of the Atoms for Peace program. The idea was to use atomic energy for peaceful means, in this case by gardening with irradiated seeds that would hopefully produce beneficial mutations.

ResponsibleOhio’s effort to legalize marijuana in Ohio has been mired in controversy, hindered by court battles, and attacked by government officials and cannabis advocates alike. And it might win anyway.

London is a city of immense prosperity and power. But has it succeeded at the expense of the rest of the UK?

Fascinating article about Laika and the other dogs who followed her into space.

Some people who have lost their vision find a “second sight” taking over their eyes – an uncanny, subconscious sense that sheds light into the hidden depths of the human mind.

While most killings by police are deemed justified, controversial cases are nearly impossible to prosecute under Washington’s unique law. 213 people were killed by police in Washington from 2005 to 2014. One officer was charged. That case is the only one to be brought in the three decades since Washington enacted the nation’s most restrictive law on holding officers accountable for the unjustified use of deadly force.

The not-so-young parents sat in the office of their socio-genetic consultant, an occupation that emerged in the late 2030s, with at least one practitioner in every affluent fertility clinic. They faced what had become a fairly typical choice: Twelve viable embryos had been created in their latest round of in vitro fertilization. Anxiously, they pored over the scores for the various traits they had received from the clinic.

Lost in a make believe world while we destroy the real one.

When Ken Dornstein learned that Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded, he did not realize that his older brother, David, was on the plane. It was December 22, 1988, and Ken, a sophomore at Brown University, was at home, in Philadelphia, on winter break. Over breakfast, he read about the disaster in the Inquirer: all two hundred and fifty-nine passengers were killed, along with eleven residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, where flaming...