Police departments across the country are grappling with how to effectively manage this new stream of evidence. Should body camera footage be treated like any other police record? Or is there something unique about the footage that requires unique legislation like the bill proposed in North Carolina? To find out, Pacific Standard spoke with experts […]

Once a year, when Slava Epstein was growing up in Moscow, his mother took him to the Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy, a showcase for the wonders of Soviet life. The expo featured many things—from industrial harvesters to Uzbek wine—but Epstein, who began going in the nineteen-sixties, when he was eight or […]

A year ago this month, authorities say, Dylann Roof walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and shot nine people to death during a prayer service. It was soon discovered that Roof—who faces the death penalty if he’s convicted—had espoused hateful views of African-Americans and had posed with the Confederate flag […]

Since the end of the recession, economic growth has been lackluster despite the Federal Reserve putting the pedal to the metal by pursuing zero interest rates and engaging in bond purchases known as quantitative easing. The rationale for this policy is that artificially suppressed interest rates and easy money are required for the Fed to […]

But the passage of the new measures likely heralds a more permanent shift – one that is moving away from cigarette smoking as a social norm, says Richard Daynard, president of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Boston’s Northeastern University. “I don’t think the tobacco industry lobby is what it once was,” he says. “I […]

Hillary Clinton had seemed like the inevitable Democratic nominee for so long—not just in the current campaign, but eight years ago as well—that she tends not to get the credit she’s due for what is by any measure a remarkable accomplishment. And it’s not just that she’s the first woman to become the presumptive nominee […]