What It's Like To Navigate The NFL's Concussion Settlement Hellscape
The NFL is doing everything it can to avoid paying former players who have dementia.
Missing Hope: A Trio of Miscarriages, and What Happened After
On the cusp of delivery, a mother-to-be recounts the anxiety-laden path to parenthood.
Children of the Opioid Epidemic
In the midst of a national crisis, mothers addicted to drugs struggle to get off them — for their babies’ sake, and their own.
Adam Davidson is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
“I am as shocked this moment that Trump was elected as I was the moment he was elected. That fundamental state of shock. It’s like there’s a pile of putrid, rotting human feces on a table and like six of the people around the table are like, ‘That is disgusting.’ And four are like ‘Oh it’s so delicious. Oh, I love it. It’s delicious.’ And I keep saying, ‘Well, why do you like it?’ ... Trump is not a very interesting person in my mind. He’s a very simple, one of the most simple public figures ever. And his business is complex that in that it’s lots of people doing lots of things, but the fundamental nature of it is not that mysterious. So, it is a challenge to keep me engaged, but I’m engaged. And then as a citizen, I’ve never been more engaged.”
Thanks to MailChimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Why Do I Have to Know What McDonald’s Is?
On the work of Rachel Cusk.
The Most Unlikely D.A. In America
Can Mark Gonzalez change the system?
I Drove Myself Nuts Trying to Unravel the Mystery of Seemingly Unparented 9-Year-Old Instagram Shit-Talker Lil Tay
Who is this person?
General Steve
A former US Army officer is now a general for a country accused of war crimes.
Univision Is A Fucking Mess
A deep dive into what ails the media company.
The Abuse Allegations that Brought Down New York's Attorney General
Eric Schneiderman faces a #MeToo reckoning of his own.
A Sea Story
The Estonia was carrying 989 passengers when it sank in 30-foot seas on its way across the Baltic in September 1994. More than 850 lost their lives. The ones who survived acted quickly and remained calm.
I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye
What Kanye West really wants.
The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul
Kids have taken a technology that was supposed to help grownups stop smoking and invented a new kind of bad habit, molded in their own image.
The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever
In a Plano bowling alley one night, Bill Fong came so close to perfection that it nearly killed him.
The Man Who Cracked the Lottery
It all started with an unclaimed lottery ticket worth millions, soon revealing a string of unlikely winners that pointed to an inside job. But who had rigged the lottery? And how?
Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?
A profile of the chairman of Fox News.
People Are Starving
Coming to terms with eating disorders.
The Spy Who Came Home
Why an expert in counterterrorism became a beat cop.
All-American Nazis
How a senseless double murder in Florida exposed the rise of an organized fascist youth movement in the United States.
The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code
Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "When the Rain Comes"
With upheaval looming, a college tennis player considers his love, his training, and his own agency.
The Original Donald Trump
To understand the rise of Donald Trump is to understand his mentor, Roy Cohn — and the New York City establishment that aided and abetted him.
How to Kill a Fish
Most of the fish we eat die by asphyxiation. But there’s a better way, both for the fish and those who eat them.
Lauren Hilgers is a journalist and the author of Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown.
“You just need to spend a lot of time with people. And it’s awkward. I read something when I was first starting out as a journalist in China, ‘Make a discipline out of being uncomfortable.’ I think that’s very helpful. You’re going to feel uncomfortable a lot of the time, and just decide to be okay with it and just keep going with it.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Substack, and Skillshare for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Great High School Impostor
All Artur Samarin wanted to be was a normal American teenager. So that’s what he became.
