LBR Picks: The Best of May 2026

He Sold His House Using an AI Chatbot Instead of a Realtor

Plus: wildfire smoke and sick babies, deadly new microbes, and rural America's forgotten girls

She booked the flights and arranged the cash for Jeffrey Epstein. Does she really know nothing?

Plus: three prize-winning stories that might be AI, Nicolas Cage explains himself, and the great artisanal cheese heist.

British Schoolboys Are Falling for AI Girlfriend Apps

Plus: prediction-market traders beating Wall Street for millions, a writer who lost his marriage on a synced laptop, and Google's plans for Pine Island.

Autocrats Are Plotting for Immortality

Plus: the underwater search for America's first people, a Russian family in hiding for 40 years, and a girl enslaved in a Texas suburb.

He spent 23 days in jail. His stalker put him there.

Plus: the lawyers using wrongful death suits to punish abortion helpers, a 10-time Jeopardy champ's playbook, and mahjong's $400 makeover.

He thought he hit a deer. He'd killed a 10-year-old.

Plus: the 1876 fair that hid a country falling apart, the orangutan rescues that may be killing them, and Gen Z's 1830s twin in Paris.

Merck Turned a Cancer Breakthrough Into a $31 Billion Machine. The World Is Paying for It.

Plus: an 85-year-old's chosen death in the Tenderloin, the banal horror of Jimmy Fallon, and the Hollywood writers secretly training AI.

Why Most People Lose On Prediction Markets

Plus: a casino disguised as a prediction market, surveillance built into your pocket, and one writer's year inside insurance's shadow workforce.

He spent 15 months undercover. His landlord threatened to kill him.

Plus: fake viral music, Americans living in the desert for $180, and Gen Z students who can't unsee what they've seen.

Babies are dying from a shot parents won't let them have

Plus: the Indianapolis Clowns' controversial return, NYC's most violent women's shelter, and a blind woman living in a car for a decade.

He bombed a nuclear power station and rode out on his bicycle.

Plus: Elizabeth Strout's 11th novel, an American tween on the edge of everything, and why Little Debbie matters.

Adopted kids are the troubled teen industry's most profitable target

Plus: a dog longevity pill nears FDA approval, a Pennsylvania dairy dynasty sells its last herd, and new science on bee cognition.

The doctors gave him two years. He spent them hiking to Canada.

Plus: the refugee who drowned swimming the English Channel, the stone skipper with 88 world-record hops, and why Ethiopian runners ignore GPS watches.

Saving lost young men with chop saws

Plus: the OceanGate disaster, how medieval art trained us to see Black bodies as dangerous, and Bob Odenkirk on comedy and parenthood.

Tech Billionaires Are Engineering Smarter Babies to Survive the AI They Built

Plus: what losing childhood vaccines could cost us, the Marshall Islands' first-ever soccer team, and how Silicon Valley went from idealist to oligarch.

She Was Kidnapped in Baghdad and Forced to Confess on Camera

Plus: a bacteria creeping up the East Coast, India's most powerful jailed gangster, and why wolves belong in a healthy ecosystem.

A Mother Buried Her Daughter. Then the Real Nightmare Started.

Plus: Nick Fuentes's $900K fan economy, why Americans are leaving the U.S. in record numbers, and the brutal logic of trophy hunting conservation.

Florida's Online Betting Crisis Is Destroying Young Men's Savings

Plus: mysterious "little red dots" baffling JWST astronomers, a disabled mother's search for self-forgiveness, and whether our ancestors felt pain like we do.

Americans Over 55 Own 74% of the Wealth. The Bill Is Coming Due.

Plus: a Russian academic's battle to renounce his citizenship after Ukraine, the anonymous model behind a global feminist icon, and a hospital chain that never set aside a dollar for malpractice.

One in Four "Vegetative" Patients Is Conscious. Almost None Are Ever Tested.

Plus: the Buffalo Catholics who raided two draft boards in their underwear, how the Mellon Foundation controls American humanities, and a father's grief written from a looping TikTok video.