In the Pit With the Fighting Roosters
A massive raid on a long-running cockfighting ring in Arkansas has raised complex questions about ICE, immigration, and the future of a centuries-old tradition.
A massive raid on a long-running cockfighting ring in Arkansas has raised complex questions about ICE, immigration, and the future of a centuries-old tradition.
David Hill The Ringer Jul 2018 35min Permalink
How Fortnite became the Instagram of gaming.
Brian Feldman New York Jul 2018 20min Permalink
The intersection of climate change and reality TV.
Katie M. Flynn Ninth Letter Jul 2018 15min Permalink
Hua Qu is fighting to save her husband — one of at least seven U.S. captives in the Islamic Republic being used as pawns in a nearly 40-year secret history of hostage taking.
Laura Secor New York Times Magazine Jul 2018 35min Permalink
Mike Picarella wanted to protect a co-worker from humiliating sexual harassment. He didn’t expect his own life to be destroyed in the process.
David Dayen Highline Jul 2018 40min Permalink
A “reckless” fracking company, poisoned springs, and a family forced to buy water at Walmart.
Eliza Griswold The Intercept Jul 2018 20min Permalink
The author travels to Mexico to meet a retired assassin and kidnapper, now himself a target of the cartels that once employed him.
Charles Bowden Harper's Apr 2009 35min Permalink
Bryan Fogel is the Oscar-winning director of Icarus.
“But there was a long period of time also that none of us were really thinking so much about the film. It was really that we were in a real world crisis. Gregory's life was essentially in my hands.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Summer, Google Play, and Stitcher Premium for sponsoring this week's episode.
Jul 2018 Permalink
Rojava becomes the Spanish Civil War of modern times for a ragtag group of leftists revolutionaries.
Seth Harp Rolling Stone Jul 2018 30min Permalink
After the blockbuster success of Kong: Skull Island, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts fled Hollywood to live the expat dream life in Vietnam. Then, one night at a Saigon club, he was brutally beaten by a mysterious mob of gangsters. Who were these monsters? Soon, he began directing something entirely different—an international hunt for the men who nearly killed him.
Max Marshall GQ Jul 2018 20min Permalink
From kitchen camp to political plates, queer people have been shaping food culture for decades.
Kyle Fitzpatrick Eater Jun 2018 15min Permalink
What happens when your neighborhood, your city, seem to have lost their way?
Robert Sullivan Places Journal Jun 2018 25min Permalink
A nation of suit-wearing salarymen educates its first generation of stay-at-home dads.
Amy Westervelt Topic Jun 2018 15min Permalink
A pre-eminent expert on large carnivores runs afoul of the enemies of the wolf.
Christopher Solomon New York Times Magazine Jul 2018 25min Permalink
Aum Shinrikyo was founded in 1984 as a yoga and meditation class, initially known as Oumu Shinsen no Kai (オウム神仙の会 "Aum Mountain Hermits’ Society"), by pharmacist Chizuo Matsumoto.
Later, Matsumoto changed his name to Shoko Asahara and masterminded the most deadly terrorist attack in Japanese history. Asahara was executed by hanging on July 6, 2018, at the Tokyo Detention House, 23 years after the sarin gas attack, along with six other cult members.
After decades of influence, the media mogul isn’t so much a person as an epoch.
Richard Cooke The Monthly Jul 2018 40min Permalink
When your job is to constantly share your life, even your worst moments are an opportunity to please your audience.
Adrian Chen New Yorker Jul 2018 30min Permalink
On the enduring appeal of Olive Garden.
Helen Rosner Eater Oct 2017 20min Permalink
Could a global icon of extinction still be alive?
Brooke Jarvis New Yorker Jun 2018 25min Permalink
Seventeen years before the Stonewall Riots, Dale Jennings proclaimed to a California court that he was a homosexual. It was the first glimmer of a civil rights revolution. This is the story of an unsung, and reluctant, hero.
Peyton Thomas The Atavist Jul 2018 45min Permalink
Twelve years ago, Tamra Keepness disappeared from her Regina home. What happened that night?
Jana G. Pruden The Walrus Jun 2016 20min Permalink
On the eugenicist and the Mellon family heiress who built the anti-immigrant policy agenda that Trump is now implementing.
Brendan O'Connor Splinter Jul 2018 40min Permalink
When the people of Flint, Michigan, complained that their tap water smelled bad and made children sick, it took officials 18 months to accept there was a problem.
Anna Clark The Guardian Jul 2018 20min Permalink
A mother and child navigate life after a natural disaster.
Lauren Groff New Yorker Jul 2018 15min Permalink
Stories about the cases that wind through the Old Supreme Court Chamber and the justices who have shaped its legacy.
Sex, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court.
Jill Lepore New Yorker May 2015 20min
Analysis of the trial from future Supreme Court justice.
Felix Frankfurter The Atlantic Mar 1927 1h15min
Every law student knows John Brady’s name. But few know the story of the bumbling murder that ended in a landmark legal ruling.
Thomas L. Dybdahl The Marshall Project Jun 2018 20min
The Supreme Court justice on gay rights, the problem with consensus, and the Devil.
Jennifer Senior New York Oct 2013 25min
In 1976, newly appointed Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens voted to reinstate capital punishment in the United States. Thirty years later, he argued that it’s unconstitutional. Here, he explains why he changed his mind.
John Paul Stevens New York Review of Books Dec 2010 15min
How Chief Justice John Roberts pulled off Citizens United.
Jeffrey Toobin New Yorker May 2012 40min
How Neil Gorsuch became the second-most-polarizing man in Washington.
Simon van Zuylen-Wood New York May 2018 20min
On the combined force of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia, a Tea Party stalwart.
Jeffrey Toobin New Yorker Aug 2011 35min
No one argues before the Supreme Court more than Tommy Goldstein.
Noam Scheiber The New Republic Apr 2006 20min
Mar 1927 – Jun 2018 Permalink