The Store That Called the Cops on George Floyd
A teenage clerk dialed 911. How should the brothers who own CUP Foods pay for what happened next?
The Vampire Ship
How the seizure of Europe’s largest heroin shipment created bloody fallout throughout the world—and sparked still-raging political corruption scandals in Turkey, Greece, and the Middle East.
The World According to Bad Bunny
The Puerto Rican reggaetonero has come to dominate global pop on his own terms.
Latria Graham is a writer living in South Carolina. Her work has appeared in Outside, Garden & Gun, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Her latest essay is "Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream."
“My goal as a person—not just as a writer—is to be the adult that I needed when I was younger. That’s why I go and talk to college classes. That’s why I write some of these vulnerable things, to let people that are struggling know that they’re not on their own. … I have to be unmerciful to myself, I think, in order to do it. I really do try to dissect myself and my mistakes. And just kind of say, Here’s the full deck of my life. Take from it what you need. But I’m not holding out on you.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Eleventh Word
“Uncertainty, it has been shown, is more painful than certain physical pain.”
Climbing's Little Helper
How dexamethasone corrupted mountaineering.
Lives on the Line
How COVID-19 ravaged Minnesota.
An American Drug Lord in Acapulco
How a middle-class jock from a Texas border town became La Barbie, one of the most ruthless and feared cartel leaders in Mexico.
Elderly and Homeless
Over the next decade, the number of elderly homeless Americans is projected to triple.
The Sealed City
Nine days in Wuhan.
Pregnant During the Pandemic: Three Stories
At work and at home, pregnancy alters the COVID experience.
Japan’s Lost Generation Is Still Jobless and Living With Their Parents
Shut out of the employment market in their 20s, hikkomori shut-ins continue to search for direction in middle age.
Inside the Airline Industry's Meltdown
On the future of air travel.
How To Play Piano
On Glenn Gould.
The Last Patrol
In 2019, President Trump pardoned Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance, who was serving a 20-year sentence for ordering the murder of two Afghan civilians.
To Lorance’s defenders, the act was long overdue. To members of his platoon, it was a gross miscarriage of justice.
Hype Man of the Century
The bizarre story of what happened when Chinese crypto millionaire Justin Sun acquired BitTorrent.
Meet the Customer Service Reps for Disney and Airbnb Who Have to Pay to Talk to You
Arise Virtual Solutions, part of the secretive world of work-at-home customer service, helps large corporations shed costs at the expense of workers.
A TikTok House Divided
You’re 19 years old. You get famous overnight. You move to LA. Now what?
Oh, Jeremy!
An interview with the playwright Jeremy O. Harris.
What I Learned Inside the N.B.A. Bubble
Against all odds, it really was a refuge of competence, normalcy and transcendent play. But the outside world has a way of sneaking in.
A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans
Right-wing militias brace for civil conflict.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Townie"
Details of a quarter-life crisis.
The Pretender
People in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, thought Lois Reiss was a nice wife and grandmother. If she had a vice, it was playing the slots. Then she committed murder.
Nicholson Baker is the author of 18 books of fiction and nonfiction. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, and many other publications. His latest book is Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act.
"In the end, I don’t care how famous you get, how widely read you are during your lifetime. You’re going to be forgotten. And you’re going to have five or six fans in the end. It’s going to be your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren are going to say, Oh, yeah, he was big. … So I think the key is, write what you actually care about. Because in the end, you’re only doing this for yourself. … So maybe do your best stuff for yourself and for the three, four, five people who know in the coming century that you ever existed. That’s all you need to do."
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Students Left Behind by Remote Learning
Has a desire to keep the coronavirus out of schools put children’s long-term well-being at stake?
