Lea Konczal

Ila Loetscher took costumed turtles on late-night TV and founded a nonprofit that has rescued thousands of the creatures.

He’s a fourth-generation watermelon farmer, he married the Texas Watermelon Queen, and he puts his face on every melon he sells.

Every year, residents of the Texas border city compete to see who can give the best scream.

Quick: imagine a Texan. If you thought of a rugged white guy in a cowboy hat, artificial intelligence agrees with you—almost. Inspired by a Rest of World story that examined cultural stereotypes in the popular AI image generator Midjourney, we asked the program to create one hundred images in response to various Texas-related prompts, such as “a Texan,” “a house in Texas,” and “a plate of Texan food.” Of the 100 individuals Midjourney spat out in response to “a Texan,” 92 wore cowboy hats. Fi…

Kathleen Hoffmann could have been a ghost. As the 87-year-old toed the foul line of her team’s lane at Solms Bowling Club, there wasn’t much around her to separate this moment, in 2023,­ from 1983, when Hoffmann was a fairly new member at Solms; or from 1933, shortly after the club moved to this spot from its original location across the street; or even from 1903, when the club was only five years old. Bowlers still scrawled their scores on chalkboards, teens still scrambled to set up pins at…

Elizabeth “Plinky” Toepperwein peeled potatoes with bullets and shot cigarettes out of her husband’s mouth.

Elizabeth “Plinky” Toepperwein peeled potatoes with bullets and shot cigarettes out of her husband’s mouth.

The thirty-sixth annual Wendish Fest, held this September in Serbin, was a day of celebration for the little-known ethnic group.

The psychoactive cactus is sacred to many Native Americans, but it’s quickly disappearing from the only U.S. state where it grows.

LeRoy Colombo was a champion swimmer, and even landed in the Guinness Book of World Records. But there's more to his story.