The Atavist Magazine

The Girl in the Picture

A sketch artist and a grieving mother set out to solve a cold case. The more they dug, the more terrifying the truth became.

The Desert Blues

In 2001, two unlikely friends created a music festival in Mali that drew the likes of Bono and Robert Plant. Then radical Islam tore them apart.

‘We Wish to Be Able to Sing’

For more than half a century, the people of Easter Island lived under an oppressive colonial regime. Then a schoolteacher sparked an unlikely revolution.

A Feast for Lost Souls

In Sinaloa, Mexico, women are recovering the bodies of missing loved ones—and cooking to keep memories of the dead alive.

The Butcher of Havana

How a drifter from Milwaukee became the chief executioner of the Cuban revolution and a test case for U.S. civil rights.

Searching for Mr. X

For eight years, a man without a memory lived among strangers at a hospital in Mississippi. But was recovering his identity the happy ending he was looking for?

The Love Bomb

For 50 years, Enthusiastic Sobriety programs have promised to help teenagers kick drug and alcohol addiction. But former followers say ES doesn’t save lives—it destroys them.

No Place Like Home

In 2005, a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz was stolen from a small town in Minnesota. Who took them, and where did they go? In an eight-part narrative podcast, two journalists search for answers.

The Snitch

In Scott Kimball, the FBI thought it had found a high-value informant who could help solve big cases. What it got instead was lies, betrayal, and murder.

Invisible Kid

Sentenced to life in prison at 16, Adolfo Davis hoped a Supreme Court ruling would give him a chance at a new beginning. But nothing about freedom turned out as he expected

The Secret Formula

Could shrunken heads hold the key to curing cancer? One man thought so—and spent a lifetime trying to prove it.

Castles in the Sky

While renovating a house in San Francisco, a couple discovered a diary, hidden away for more than a century. It held a love story—and a mystery.

Stranger Than Fiction

Inside the ‘Epoch Times’: How an aspiring poet in Brooklyn became a tool in a right-wing propaganda blitz linked to Falun Gong.

The Pretender

People in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, thought Lois Riess was a nice wife and grandmother. If she had a vice, it was playing the slots. Then she committed murder.

The Free and the Brave

A patriotic parade, a bloody brawl, and the origins of U.S. law enforcement’s war on the political left.

Do You Hear the People Sing?

Brutality and resistance on the front lines of Hong Kong’s battle for democracy.

The Long Walk

When a group of Black mothers in Ohio were told to wait for school integration, they started marching every day in protest. They kept going for nearly 18 months.

Long May They Reign

A butterfly named Flamingo, an epic migration, and the crusade to save one of America’s most iconic species.

The Bard

One man’s quest to save the music of the Holocaust.

Revive

A fatal overdose, a stunning coincidence, and a mother’s long quest to heal.