Inside Palmer Luckey’s Bid to Build A Border Wall
How the Oculus founder, along with ex-Palantir executives, plan to reinvent national security, starting with Trump’s agenda.
A Company Built on a Bluff
How Shane Smith built Vice.
First Canada Tried to Charm Trump. Now It’s Fighting Back.
How the relationship between Canada and America broke.
“This Is Bigger Than Myself”
How the women of U.S. Gymnastics found their voice.
The Tower
A 60,000-word investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire.
Anthony Bourdain’s Moveable Feast
A profile.
The Hardest Lesson on Tier 2C
Can a violent adult jail teach kids to love school? A rare look inside one of the only high schools at an adult jail
Bach at the Burger King
When the music of Vivaldi and Mozart are used to repel the homeless from sidewalks and Burger Kings, does it still glorify the dignity of humanity?
The Trials of White Boy Rick
Was one of Detroit’s most notorious criminals also one of the FBI’s most valuable informants?
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Bottomless Sounds"
The stark realities of nature and nuture.
A Journey Into the Righteous, Risk-Averse World of Faith-Based Films
How the Christian film industry works.
The Last House in Rosewood
An important house in Florida history is for sale, its future uncertain. Some want the historic house preserved, while the racism that fueled the Rosewood riots remains.
Elif Batuman is a novelist and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her latest article is “Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry.”
“I hear novelists say things sometimes like the character does something they don’t expect. It’s like talking to people who have done ayahuasca or belong to some cult. That’s how I felt about it until extremely recently. All of these people have drunk some kind of Kool Aid where they’re like, ‘I’m in this trippy zone where characters are doing things.’ And I would think to myself, if they were men—Wow, this person has devised this really ingenious way to avoid self-knowledge. If they were women, I would think—Wow, this woman has found an ingenious way to become complicit in her own bullying and silencing. It’s only kind of recently—and with a lot of therapy actually—that I’ve come to see that there is a mode of fiction that I can imagine participating in where, once I’ve freed myself of a certain amount of stuff I feel like I have to write about, which has gotten quite large by this point, it would be fun to make things up and play around.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Google Play, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Real Story of South Florida Rapper XXXTentacion
His rise to the top of the Billboard charts coincides with a list of criminal charges, including domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment, and aggravated battery of a pregnant woman.
The Friend
When the author’s wife was dying, his best friend moved in.
How Auburn Softball Unraveled
A year with the scandal-plagued squad.
When the Punishment Feels Like a Crime
Brock Turner’s twisted legacy—and a Stanford professor’s relentless pursuit of justice.
Looking for Life on a Flat Earth
What a burgeoning movement says about science, solace, and how a theory becomes truth.
Own Goal
The inside story of how the U.S. missed the 2018 World Cup.
Little Scalia
How Neil Gorsuch became the second-most-polarizing man in Washington.
‘It Was My Job, and I Didn’t Find Him’
Scot Peterson was a beloved school resource officer in Parkland, Fla. Then a gunman opened fire and he stayed outside.
Hell on Wheels
How one of New York’s major trash haulers does business.
The Face in the Waves
Jaimee was beloved. Jaimee was struggling. And then Jaimee was gone.
Act of Love: The Life and Death of Donna Mae Hill
At 90 years old, Lawrence Hill’s mother was ready to end it all on her own terms, but Canada’s assisted-dying law was too strict to allow that.
The Man Who Says Science Blew Its Best Shot at an AIDS Vaccine
Burt Dorman says that the scientific mainstream missed the chance to wipe out AIDS and save the lives of 35 million people. Now he wants another try.
