Issue No. 8 — The Official Count

Who decides which number is true? This week the desk un-inducts a superyacht (first de-induction in Society Pages history), reads the count that made Congo's outbreak the largest in its history, and asks why Colombia's missing are 379 people or 4,000, depending on who's holding the pencil. Cover story: a button salesman who counted the plague, a nurse who weaponized a chart, and the hurricane toll that went from 64 to 2,975 in one revision. Feature: the census Congress threw in the trash for nine years. Plus a Pentagon file about a triangle that blocked out the stars, and Planet Money's hunt for the most common American. Double-drop week — Issue 7 is here too. No ads. Somebody counted.