(Sub)Culture Features

YA is dead — at least, that was one prevailing thought after a string of popular young adult books failed to garner success on screens in 2016. Studio executives blamed the slew of unsuccessful adaptations on a new generation of readers no longer interested in coming-of-age stories. But as YA …

If it seems like a new state is legalizing cannabis nearly every week, don’t worry, you’re not high — states are indeed allowing adult-use of the drug at an unprecedented pace. If the wave of green legislation is slowing to some degree now, that’s only because so many states have …

This story was originally published bySearchlight New Mexicoand is published here as part of an ongoing collaboration with Rolling Stone.Additional reporting by Don J. Usner.Read a companion piece about the criminalization of addiction here. Francesquita Martinez’s words are slow and deliberate, perhaps a result of the methadone she’s taking to …

The filthy, cramped, and corrupt federal lockup in Manhattan where Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself was deemed such a mess that the Department of Justice announced its closure in August — and cleared it of prisoners in late October. On Nov. 4, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New …

At her Olympics debut in 1984, track-and-field legend Jackie Joyner-Kersee was favored to win gold in the heptathlon but was struggling with her recovery from a recent hamstring injury. Not with the muscle — she’d healed physically — but in her head. She couldn’t stop worrying about the injury recurring. …

On June 9th, 2021, police in Los Angeles‘s Skid Row, a neighborhood frequented by homeless people and substance abusers, responded to a call from a man in a trailer. The man said that a woman had stopped by hours earlier requesting to take a nap. He obliged, offering her a …

In December 2010, law enforcement found four bodies along a scrub-covered stretch of highway on the south coast of Long Island. The following spring, six more sets of human remains were found in the same area. Six of the victims have been identified as young women who were sex workers. …

On a damp and unseasonably cool late-March day in Southern California, Nicole Batenhorst looked around the triage tent and realized that getting a folding metal chair made her one of the lucky ones. She had just arrived at her local hospital in an ambulance after her heartbeat had become dangerously …

Since May 2020, youth organizers across the country have been mobilizing against police brutality and working for systemic change in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Some of them had organized for social justice before, but many of them took to the streets for the first time and without an …

Last Christmas, Sha-Asia Washington, a paraprofessional at a Brooklyn charter school, and her boyfriend Juwan Lopez announced to his mother Desiree Williams that she was pregnant. They gave her a Christmas card with a sonogram inside it, inscribed, “to grandma.” She was thrilled to be pregnant, posing for maternity photo …