CATEGORIES

LABOR PAINS

Lucy Kirkwood's \"The Welkin\" assesses women's work.

OFFLINE

Lizzy McAlpine on the power and pitfalls of viral fame.

GHOSTS ON THE WATER

Glass eels are mysterious creatures—and worth a fortune to those who catch them.

SMALL WONDER

How will nanomachines change our lives?

In Search of Lost Time

The strange journey of John Lennon's stolen Patek Philippe watch.

Books – Everything in Hand

The C.I.A.'s covert ops have mattered-but not in the way that it hoped.

His Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Ye bought a masterpiece by Tadao Ando-and gave it a violent remix.

MOVE IN FOR THE CULL

The complicated calculus of killing some wild creatures to protect others.

FOND OF FLAGS

My wife is fond of fast food. I am not. My wife is particularly fond of the Wendy’s Baconator. I argue that it’s less expensive to order a Dave’s Double with a side of bacon, then put your own pretzels on top. (I’m fond of the Rold Gold Tiny Twists Original.)

TROPHY ROOM

Going on safari.

SCREEN GRAB

How CoComelon conquered children's television.

GREAT MIGRATIONS

\"Home\" and \"What Became of Us.\"

SICK, SAD WORLD

What COVID did to fiction.

CHICAGO ON THE SEINE CAMILLE BORDAS

I used to tell myself stories on the job, to make it feel exciting—spy stories, exfiltration stories, war stories. I used to come up with poignant little details that turned the repatriation cases I worked on into “Saving Private Ryan,” into “Johnny Got His Gun.”

A SEMBLANCE OF PEACE

How life in a co-living community changed after October 7th.

Making a Roman Emperor

A newly discovered monumental arch in Serbia reveals a family's rise to power in the late second century A.D.

The Assyrian Renaissance

Archaeologists return to Nineveh in northern Iraq, one of the ancient world's grandest imperial capitals

Java's Megalithic Mountain

Across the Indonesian archipelago, people raised immense stones to honor their ancestors

RISE AND FALL OF TIWANAKU

New dating techniques are unraveling the mystery of a sacred Andean city

THE SONG IN THE STONE

Located in a desert gorge in southern Peru, Toro Muerto is one of the richest rock art sites in South America. It includes at least 2,600 boulders bearing petroglyphs, many featuring figures known as danzantes who appear to be dancing.

Ayo Edebiri – Funny Girl

The Bear made Ayo Edebiri a Hollywood darling. Now she's making Hollywood worth our attention.

Magical Thinking

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ's One Hundred Years of Solitude has never been faithfully adapted for the screen partly because he wouldn't allow it in his lifetime. With a Netflix series now in the works, VF tracks the long journey of a masterpiece

Beyond a BOUNDARY

With sped-up matches and a bevy of big-money backers, cricket is pitching an American resurgence

JUSTICE Without Borders

Inside the effort to prosecute Russians for Ukraine war crimes in Argentina

The Writing on THE WALL

The promise of poststrike opportunities kept TV writers from losing hope last year. Now a new season of bleak financial realities is testing their resolve all over again.

VANITIES

NICHOLAS GALITZINE kicks into high gear

TAKE NO PRISONERS

The State Department's hostage point man, Roger Carstens, works to free US citizens from captivity, whether they're being held by Vladimir Putin or Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. ADAM CIRALSKY embeds with America's top negotiators through 15 months of rescue efforts with the highest of stakes: liberty or death

THE HIT MAN

Between Anyone but You and the upcoming Twisters, GLEN POWELL has seen all kinds of action on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's hottest young stars

Shots in the Dark

The Ozempic weight-loss miracle has a dark side: As desperate patients contend with shortages and skyhigh prices, a world of criminals and con artists are filling the void with lifethreatening counterfeits. KATHERINE EBAN investigates our alarmingly active pharmaceutical underground

Bibbidi Bobbidi WHO?

Disney is on the hunt for a new CEO to replace the legendary Bob Iger when he retires (again) at the end of 2026. Inside a $200 billion kingdom looking for a new king or, for the first time ever, a queen