Features
A collection of Vox's longreads and feature reporting projects.
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?"
The age of monsters
In the ’80s and ’90s, kids’ media was full of murder and mayhem. What changed?
The morbid appeal of “botched” plastic surgery
Cosmetic procedures are on the rise. So is our voyeuristic fascination with how they go wrong.
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The rise of the influencer sex worker
Platforms like OnlyFans let people with big followings online earn money. What about the sex workers who were there first?
Can a haunted house even scare us in 2021?
When a pandemic rages just outside our doors, maybe escapism is all we can hope for.
House isn’t selling? Blame the ghosts.
Realtor? Check. Appraiser? Check. Ghostbuster? Check.
The horror century
From the first morbid films a hundred years ago, scary movies always been a dark mirror on Americans’ deepest fears and anxieties.
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Every version of the Monica Lewinsky story reveals America’s failure of empathy
Twenty-three years later, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal is a tale of cultural sadism.
Apple picking is a bizarre imitation of hard work
Oh, the performative faux labor of it all.
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How mental health became a social media minefield
Social media is now basically WebMD for mental health.
The sad, predictable limits of America’s “economic recovery”
Officially, the Covid-19 recession lasted just two months. So why are so many still suffering?
How your favorite jeans might be fueling a human rights crisis
Cotton’s connection to forced labor by Uyghurs in Xinjiang ought to have you rethinking fast fashion.