5280 • 10th November 2026

He Was One of the World’s Best Triathletes. Doping Cost Him Everything. What Next?

Colorado’s Collin Chartier rose to the top of the triathlon world before a doping scandal destroyed his career. Now he’s built a new life as a breathwork and mindfulness guru—but even he’s not sure if he’s simply traded one addiction for another.

5280 • 10th November 2026

Why Did an Arvada Daycare Stay Open for Months After a Child Abuse Charge?

In September, a child nearly died at an in-home daycare. After learning that the owner had been charged with abuse five months earlier, parents are demanding answers—and experts are calling it a preventable tragedy.

5280 • 15th October 2026

Animal Control Has Always Been Tough Work. Climate Change Is Making it Harder

Bears, coyotes, mountain lions: More wild animals are tangling with humans as increased drought and heat alter their behavior. Animal control officers are scrambling to keep up.

5280 • 4th December 2025

Will Wolves and Ranchers Ever Be Able To Coexist?

Five years into Colorado’s ambitious wolf reintroduction experiment, ranchers and conservationists have never been more bitterly divided.

5280 • 30th June 2025

“The Phone Dropped, And Then Screaming”: Saving Two Hikers, One Struck by Lightning, in a Record-Setting Rescue

How more than 40 people came together to save a couple of hikers stranded on Torreys Peak.

5280 • 9th June 2025

King Soopers Is so Bad, Some of Its Own Workers Won’t Shop There

As another strike looms, grocery workers told 5280 that understaffing is so severe, they often can’t put food on the shelves before it spoils.

5280 • 19th May 2025

Can One of Colorado’s Rarest Birds Survive the Trump Administration?

The Gunnison sage-grouse is found almost exclusively in Colorado, and 90 percent of its native habitat has vanished. Impending changes to the Endangered Species Act could lead to its extinction.

5280 • 24th April 2025

Who Killed Thomas Riha? A New Exhibit Explores One of Colorado’s Coldest Cases

More than fifty years ago, a University of Colorado Boulder professor vanished under suspicious circumstances. The Cold War mystery has never been solved.

Texas Monthly • 20th May 2024

To the Lighthouse, on a Kayak

A bottlenose dolphin has surfaced no more than six feet from my boat, its shiny dorsal fin catching the morning light.

Texas Monthly • 12th March 2024

Whooping Cranes Are Back From the Brink

The cranes' movements are deliberate, regal, and severe, a march of impossibly tall, thin, chopsticklike black legs propping up snowy white feathers.

Texas Monthly • 22nd October 2024

Wake Up, Sheeple! Nothing Controls Grass on Solar Farms as Well as Sheep

A Texas farmer explains why solar energy companies prefer to maintain their land with hungry livestock rather than industrial mowers.

Texas Monthly • 8th March 2023

Empire, Wide and Glorious

As we celebrate one hundred years of our state parks, they are more popular than ever. But our booming population is overwhelming the state’s scarce public lands. What will the next century hold for Texas’s “best idea”?

Texas Monthly • 2nd October 2024

A Rare Disease Causes a Mother’s Body to Attack Her Unborn Child. Now a Texas Doctor Has Found a Drug to Stop It.

The only available treatment for HDFN can itself be fatal, but a clinical trial led by an Austin researcher offers new hope to families.

Texas Monthly • 6th October 2023

Stopping to Smell the Moonflower, One of Texas’s Most Tenacious (and Poisonous) Plants

Unfazed by extreme weather, this dangerous beauty blooms only at night.

Texas Monthly • 17th April 2024

Rule One of Wind Turbine Repair Work: Don’t Leave Your Phone at the Top

A Big Spring wind turbine technician says the views three hundred feet above West Texas are magnificent—just watch out for the flying ants.

Texas Monthly • 15th March 2024

How to Attract the Charming Hummingbird Moth to Your Yard

Hint: leave those leaves alone!

Texas Monthly • 11th August 2023

In This North Texas Town, It’s Always Shark Week

The small city of Sherman, which lies far from the coast, is a fossil hunter’s paradise.

Texas Monthly • 26th June 2023

Hikers Are Dying on Texas Trails in Severe Heat

Recent tragedies in Big Bend and Palo Duro Canyon are a reminder to “respect the desert,” says one ranger.

Texas Monthly • 11th November 2022

Where to Watch Thousands of Sandhill Cranes Storm the Texas Skies

Each winter, a wildlife sanctuary near the Panhandle hosts one of the world’s largest gatherings of these beautiful birds.

Texas Monthly • 26th January 2022

Why Scientists Keep Discovering Strange New Wasps on the Rice University Campus

Remarkably, this isn’t the first new insect species that Scott Egan and his team have found—and not even the first that lives on the Rice campus.

Texas Monthly • 18th May 2022

The Very Big Year

When she began her year-long bird-spotting adventure, Tiffany Kersten was lost and lonely. She ended up achieving a major milestone—and finding her way.

Texas Monthly • 12th January 2023

Pray for the Predator

Why is Texas the only state that doesn’t protect mountain lions?

Texas Monthly • 29th November 2021

A Trip to the Camel Conference, Where There is So Much Slime

Need help saddling your 1,300-pound dromedary? The Southwest Camel Conference is the place to be.

Texas Monthly • 22nd September 2021

Ladies, Start Your Engines

Inside the competitive world of women's lawn mower racing.

Texas Monthly • 11th January 2024

He Died a Hero in World War II. Then His Texas Hometown Refused to Host His Memorial.

His family fought back—and made a lasting impact on the fight for Mexican American rights.

Texas Monthly • 21st May 2021

The Big Squeeze

Talented teen accordion players are keeping a historic tradition alive.

Texas Monthly • 31st October 2024

This East Texas Bird Is Off the Endangered List, but Not Out of the Woods

The red-cockaded woodpecker is an unusual bird.

Texas Monthly • 18th November 2020

How a Black Cowboy's Discovery Changed the Field of Archaeology

George McJunkin found a prehistoric bison skeleton that upended theories about human existence in the Americas.

The Texas Observer • 7th May 2018

The Time-Traveler's Guide to the Lower Pecos

Hidden away on private land in Southwest Texas is some of the oldest and best-preserved prehistoric rock art in the world. The Rock Art Rendezvous offers a rare glimpse.

The Texas Observer • 10th July 2017

Ride Like a Girl

Women riders take the reins in the macho world of charrería.

The Texas Observer • 7th January 2019

Plight at the Museum

The best Texas history museum you’ve never heard of is staring down a financial crisis. Will it survive?

The Texas Observer • 13th January 2020

How the San Antonio Police Are Rethinking Mental Health

A new documentary on policing in San Antonio makes a simple suggestion: Instead of arresting mentally ill people, listen to them.

The Texas Observer • 13th January 2020

The Internet Broke Democracy. To Fix It, Design for Human Rights.

"What we’re seeing with the major platforms right now is a scrambled attempt to rebuild the plane while the plane is being flown."

The Texas Observer • 14th May 2018

The Ghosts of Abandoned Texas Buildings Rise Up in an Eerie New Photo Book

“Lost, Texas” features starkly beautiful photos of once-thriving rural Texas towns.

The Texas Observer • 14th October 2019

Mr. Reynolds' Opus

Walk into composer Graham Reynolds’ East Austin studio, and the first thing you’ll notice, perhaps surprisingly, is the books.

The Texas Observer • 4th December 2017

Sunk Costs

Back-to-back record flooding along the Brazos River has forced people in Richmond to make an excruciating choice: Stay or go?

The Texas Observer • 30th August 2019

Two Houston Archives Gather Harvey Memories for Historians of the Future

They’re a time capsule of the destruction wrought by the deadliest storm to hit Texas since 1919.

The Texas Observer • 11th March 2019

Fearless and Funny, Molly Ivins Comes to Life in ‘Raise Hell’

If only she were around today.

The Texas Observer • 5th August 2019

'Seadrift' Dredges Up a Little Known—and Deeply Disturbing—Texas Story

An electrifying new documentary captures a forgotten conflict in the sleepy coastal community of Seadrift.

The Texas Observer • 6th April 2017

'Another Book, Another Month, Another Day Closer to You'

Some 65,600 mothers are incarcerated nationwide, a 131-percent increase since 1991.

The Alcalde • 1st November 2013

A Classroom at the Edge of the World

"If you don't know what you're doing in Svalbard, Svalbard will kill you."

The Alcalde • 21st August 2018

View from the Top

“When the Space Station would fly over Texas, Jack would look up and wave and say, ‘Hi, Mommy.’”

The Alcalde • 1st July 2017

A Cure for Clara

In 2014, the average orphan drug cost $118,820 per patient per year. That means families’ campaigning may not end even once they’ve found and funded the cure.

The Alcalde • 31st October 2014

Through the Unthinkable

Palliative care is often confused with hospice—a narrower subtype of palliative care focused on the end of life—but increasingly, it isn’t only for people who have a terminal prognosis.

The Alcalde • 1st September 2016

The Precursors

UT's first black undergraduates tell their stories.

The Alcalde • 28th February 2012

Star Power

The one thing Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't like to talk about is his time at the University of Texas.

The Alcalde • 11th January 2013

The Alcalde: 40 Acres Field Guide | Multimedia Feature

UT is an urban university in the heart of the city, yet the campus and its environs teem with fascinating plants and animals—from tropical parakeets to the world's weirdest cactus.

The Alcalde • 2nd January 2012

Minds on Fire

What happens when disadvantaged adults learn to read Shakespeare and debate philosophy? How the Free Minds Project is changing lives through the humanities