In the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico lives one of the world’s rarest and most elusive marine mammals: Rice’s whale. There are just 51 of them left, according to the most recent scientific estimates, meaning they are quite literally on the knife’s edge of extinction. That’s why, in 2019, the federal government — then […]

There was never much doubt how this Supreme Court would decide Chiles v. Salazar, a lawsuit challenging a Colorado law that bars licensed therapists from providing “conversion therapy,” or counseling that seeks to convert LGBTQ+ patients into straight and cisgender people. This Court, which has a 6-3 Republican majority, typically rules in favor of religious […]

On Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast, we hear a lot of stories from listeners. Recently, we asked people to tell us about their accents: what they love about them, things they’ve noticed. The response was huge; we got the most responses we’ve ever gotten.  This was not a surprise to Valerie Fridland. […]

I’m scheduled to take my 1-year-old on a three-hour flight just over a week from now. Probably a headache, under normal circumstances, but a bona fide nightmare amid the recent airport bedlam. I was thus relieved — overjoyed, really — to learn that the security line chaos is easing at many airports. But that doesn’t […]

In January, a 24-year-old nutrition influencer named Jacob Smith made the grave mistake of becoming a little too curious about tofu.  Smith had read a study about the health benefits of eating less meat and figured he’d try to replace a small amount of the animal products he ate with plant-based foods. So, as content […]