Features
A collection of Vox's longreads and feature reporting projects.
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Play-to-earn gaming sounds too good to be true. It probably is.
The video game industry’s clumsy flirtation with Web3 doesn’t feel like it has actual players in mind.
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What does it mean to take America’s “jobs of last resort”?
Author Eyal Press on the nation’s most morally troubling labor — and why many refuse to acknowledge it.
Gen Z does not dream of labor
On TikTok and online, the youngest workers are rejecting work as we know it. How will that play out IRL?
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The Amazonification of the American workforce
The e-commerce giant’s labor issues expose the complicated truth about getting what we want when we want it.
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What it would take to make us love our jobs again
Recognizing that many of us find purpose in what we do is a good start.
When your job helps the rest of America work
Why so many are giving up on child care work and what it will mean for everyone else.
What if the future of work is exactly the same?
For many, the gains in worker pay and power during the pandemic are fading fast — if they even saw them at all.
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How Noom got anti-dieters to go on diets
Noom promises not to be like other diets. But does it pull off the claim?
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Welcome to the Drugs Issue of The Highlight
What’s taking the feds so long to legalize marijuana? Also, therapeutic Covid-19 drugs, abortion by mail, and what a "sober" high might mean.
Federal marijuana legalization is stopped in its tracks
Public opinion, states, and even the GOP have come around to the idea of legal weed. So how hard is it to finally get done?
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The new sober-ish
Tiny doses of magic mushrooms, LSD, and cannabis have hit wellness culture, while the stigma around the drugs recedes.
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The FDA made mail-order abortion pills legal. Access is still a nightmare.
Restrictive states have already set their sights on a new wave of telehealth companies that were supposed to be a panacea for a post-Roe world.
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It’s not too late for new Covid-19 drugs to change the pandemic
The new, easy-to-take antivirals are now on pharmacy shelves. This is who they stand to help the most.
How to forgive someone who isn’t sorry
Some people will never admit wrongdoing. It’s still possible for you to move forward.
The impossible task of truth and reconciliation
Commissions are a common tool to expose atrocities after war and genocide. Reconciliation is harder to come by.
The promise — and problem — of restorative justice
Who is restorative justice restoring?
Everyone wants forgiveness, but no one is being forgiven
Modern outrage is a cycle. Could a culture of public forgiveness ever break it?
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When justice isn’t served, how do we find forgiveness?
Delores White said she was defending her daughter. She went to jail anyway.
The Stop Asian Hate movement is at a crossroads
In the year since the Atlanta shootings, the Stop Asian Hate movement dramatically changed awareness of anti-Asian racism. Where does it go from here?
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Doctors learned how to save premature infants’ lives. They forgot about pain.
Scientists are investigating how to treat pain in babies who can’t tell you when it hurts.
Maternity wards are shuttering across the US during the pandemic
The closures could make giving birth more dangerous in the United States.
They save skiers and hikers in the wilderness. Here’s how they think about resilience.
Search-and-rescue responders have powerful new ways of recovering from trauma.
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The New Orleans funeral reminds us that grief is a burden that can be shared
As the nation reckons with mass Covid-19 deaths, the power of a second line provides inspiration on how to mourn.
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The secret lives of baby teeth
Why some are trying to discover more about our bodies’ "little living archives."
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Why do we remember what we remember?
The mundane photographs that are helping scientists probe the mysteries of memory.
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How trauma became the word of the decade
The very real psychiatric term has become so omnipresent in pop culture that some experts worry it’s losing its meaning.
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Welcome to the Memory Issue of the Highlight
Survivors of early school shootings reflect, the growing popularity of the word "trauma," scientists’ efforts to understand memory, and more.
The school shooting generation grows up
An early wave of survivors came of age in a wholly unprepared world. Now they’re in their 30s and 40s, grappling with the present.
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After the Beanie Baby bubble burst
What happens when the frenzy ends and the world doesn’t value your valuables?
Time is running out. Here’s how the climate movement can level up.
The high-risk, high-reward stakes of building a more radical movement.
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The danger of treating body parts like fast fashion
Social media and the availability of new procedures have made our quest for physical perfection endless, setting women and girls up for failure.
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The case for following fads
The pandemic stole our sense of connectedness. In their own way, viral trends help us regain it.
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Welcome to the Fads Issue of The Highlight
As the holidays approach, we look at the cult of Pokémon, what turns a tiny toy into a major obsession, and the upside — and dark side — of fad culture.
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Pokémon will outlive us all
Pokémon had all the hallmarks of a flash in the pan. Two decades later, it’s a $100 billion empire.
My father, the white supremacist
I’d inherited his family’s money, his height, his arthritis. Could I inherit the very worst parts of him, too?
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The ocean’s rarest mammal has a few final lessons to teach us
A tiny porpoise called the vaquita has polarized a Mexican fishing town. The species is fighting for its life.
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The escalating costs of being single in America
Why is life in this country so hostile to single people?
The modern family
Amid distance and estrangement and strain, some are happily replacing the clans they’re born into with chosen families.
They lost parents to Covid-19. Are we abandoning them?
The number of American kids whose caregivers have died in the pandemic has surpassed 140,000.
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Janet Jackson’s Wardrobe Malfunction erased an icon of unapologetic sexuality
Janet Jackson was able to transcend America’s misogynoir — until the Super Bowl.
The lofty goals and short life of the antiracist book club
After George Floyd’s death, many white Americans formed book clubs. A year later, they’re wondering, "What now?"