Your Body, Your Self, Your Surgeon, His Instagram
Social media gave the Real Dr. 6ix a stage on which to show off liposuctions and breast lifts. But when cosmetic surgery becomes entertainment, who owns the story?…
Backchannel
Covid, Schools, and the High-Stakes Experiment No One Wanted
Reopening in the fall was a massive gamble. At one high-poverty elementary school, navigating the risks paid off….
I Am Not a Soldier, but I Have Been Trained to Kill
A sprawling tactical industry is teaching American civilians how to fight like Special Ops forces. By preparing for violence at home, are they calling it into being?…
How Many Microcovids Would You Spend on a Burrito?
Six nerdy roommates used public health data to create an online Covid-risk points system for every activity—and protect their pandemic pod….
The Case for Cannibalism, or: How to Survive the Donner Party
Don’t be a young, healthy, single man. That’s our first piece of advice….
The Unsettling Truth About the ‘Mostly Harmless’ Hiker
His emaciated body was discovered in a tent, just a few miles from a major Florida highway. His identity—and troubled past—were discovered by the internet….
The Autonomous-Car Chaos of the 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge
The self-driving vehicles smashed, burned, flipped, and tipped. But the ambitious race through the Mojave launched an industry….
A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?
In 1995, a WIRED cofounder challenged a Luddite-loving doomsayer to a prescient wager on tech and civilization’s fate. Now their judge weighs in….
The F-14 and the Secret History of the First Microprocessor
In a weird way, I’ve known Ray Holt all my life, but I never knew what he had accomplished—or how his inventions wove their way into my own family….
Some of Our Favorite Longreads of 2020
It was a brutal year. Take a breath and enjoy some of our favorite in-depth stories….
Get Rich Selling Used Fashion Online—or Cry Trying
The social shopping app Poshmark promises women the chance to spin gold out of secondhand threads. The reality is a lot of spinning, and little gold….
A Race Car Crash From Hell—and the Science That Saved Its Driver
Romain Grosjean’s F1 car slammed into a wall at 137 mph and burst into flames. He walked away because of decades of work by unsung scientists and engineers….
One Man’s Search for the DNA Data That Could Save His Life
The genetic correlations that could help Bryce Olson find a drug that works against his cancer are a scattered mess. Why don’t we have a better system for analyzing this kind of information?…
A Navy SEAL, a Quadcopter, and a Quest to Save Lives in Combat
On the battlefield, any doorway can be a death trap. A special ops vet, and his businessman brother, have built an AI to solve that problem….
Death, Love, and the Solace of a Million Motorcycle Parts
To cope with the uncertainty and sadness around my mother-in-law’s death, I set about building a four-cylinder superbike….
Huawei, 5G, and the Man Who Conquered Noise
How an obscure Turkish scientist’s obscure theoretical breakthrough helped the Chinese tech giant gain control of the future. US telecoms never had a chance….