A few weeks back, in the run-up to Christmas, my family was doing what it always does during the holiday season: watching Home Alone. And, around the time that Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern’s Wet Bandits began plotting their break-ins, I began wondering something: Were home robberies really so common in 1990, when the film […]

The Department of Justice has released more than 3 million files tied to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. The rollout has been chaotic. Many documents were heavily redacted, while others appeared to expose victims’ personal information and photos that were not supposed to be public. Officials say this is the full set of materials that […]

Today, Explained will now be publishing video episodes every Saturday in audio and video, featuring compelling interviews with key figures in politics and culture. Subscribe to Vox’s YouTube channel to get them or listen wherever you get your podcasts. US Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) is a bona fide political star. In just two terms in […]

President Donald Trump stood onstage at a presidential debate in his last campaign and falsely accused the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio of eating pets. He derided their place of birth as a “shithole” country that should be cut off from immigration — privately in his first term, then proudly and publicly in his second.  Now, the […]

Football occupies a strange place in American life. It’s the most popular sport in the country by an absurd margin, but it’s also the most controversial. It’s treated as a civic ritual in some places, a primitive distraction in others, and a kind of background noise almost everywhere.  For millions of people, football Sundays (and […]