It’s safe to say that before the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, most people hadn’t thought about messenger RNA, or mRNA, since high school science class—if ever. The molecule plays a pivotal role in the body, carrying the recipes for making various proteins to the parts of cells that produce them.

There's no beating around the bush. Within the first few minutes of Missing in Brooks County, a documentary by filmmakers Lisa Molomot and Jeff Bemiss, a migrant's body is found out in the harsh landscape of South Texas. Though the decayed human remains are only on screen for a few seconds, the image is hard to forget. "We wanted to set the stakes for people," Bemiss tells TIME. "What's happening in Brooks County is so extreme that you have to see it to really get your mind around it.

Less than 24 hours after the Taliban marched into Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul, the Biden Administration announced the largest permanent expansion of food stamp benefits in nearly half a century.

The news received scant attention, overshadowed by searing images of Afghans clinging to U.S. planes in a desperate attempt to leave the country.

Ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a new documentary chronicles the controversy around the creation of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and goes behind the scenes to explore the purpose of the site, which opened in 2014. The Outsider, which premieres Aug. 19 as the first paid ticketed film event on Facebook, probes whether the museum treats Muslims and 9/11 victims’ families with sensitivity and questions if the site does enough to capture the way the attacks changed the U.S.

When we ask parents what they want for their kids’ futures, most answer: “I want them to be happy.” But if you ask most kids what they think their parents want for their future, the answer is usually something like “To get into a good college.” It seems like a disconnect, but it’s not. Many parents we meet in the course of our work with kids believe that acceptance to a good college will lead to a good job, financial security, and happiness ad infinitum.

The last week saw the unceremonious end to the longest military adventure in American history. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan is the first major foreign policy crisis of the Biden administration and surely the largest since 9/11. It is also largely self-inflicted.

The failure lies not in the decision to exit Afghanistan but in the way the U.S. went about leaving. Indeed, the decision to leave—made initially by Trump and ratified by Biden—remains strategically sound.

Reshad Jalali was nine years old when U.S.-backed forces ousted the Taliban from Kabul in 2001, and vividly remembers the crackle of Afghan singers on the radio for the first time, a relative’s jubilation at shaving his beard, and a swelling of optimism all around him. “We said we are done with the Taliban, another chapter in Afghan history starts now,” he recalls.

This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday.

The United States is a nation of deep inequalities. Race, gender and sexuality are the obvious spaces that reveal those unlevel playing fields. But there’s another arena where the gaps aren’t immediately as obvious—but they’re increasingly important.

As lawmakers look for ways to pay for their massive U.S.

All of the things you need to know now from the editors of TIME

Jeopardy! executive producer Mike Richards has officially stepped down as incoming host of the long-running game show as multiple controversies from his past have come to light.

After emerging earlier this month as the frontrunner to take over as Jeopardy!'s new permanent host, Richards came under fire this week for offensive and sexist comments he made on a podcast several years ago.