“Hope Is an Embrace of the Unknown”
On living in dark times.
Ashley C. Ford is a writer and host of the podcast Fortune Favors the Bold. Her memoir, Somebody's Daughter, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books.
“For the first time I felt like I had so many more choices in my life than I originally thought I had. That was my first realization that I did not just have to react to the world, that I could be intentional in the world, and just curious about what came back to me.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
Keeping the Country
In southwest Florida, the Myakka River Valley—a place of mystery and myth—is under threat of development.
The Money Behind Trump's Money
The inside story of the president and Deutsche Bank, his lender of last resort.
Pure Magic
On the best Super Bowl halftime show.
A Deadly Mistake
The wrong way to fight the opioid crisis.
A Conversation in Iowa
An exchange on faith and politics in America.
Todd Hitt’s Shameless Con
How Washington society got scammed by one of its own.
The Bittersweet Bounty of Greenland's First Spring
How climate change is altering food in Greenland.
‘High Maintenance’ and the New TV Fantasy of New York
As the city is transformed by gentrification and inequality, comedies have begun depicting it as a place of magical connection.
Utah Wanted All The Tourists. Then It Got Them.
Who gets to decide when a destination is “at capacity”?
The Ghost Hunter
For hundreds of years, there were rumors of a shipwrecked treasure on the Oregon coast. But no one found anything, until Cameron La Follette began digging.
We Will Be Seen
Tressie McMillan Cottom on confronting racism, sexism, and classism.
The Lucrative, Largely Unregulated, and Widely Misunderstood World of Vaping
As medical researchers scramble to find the source of a fatal lung disease and officials seek to ban the sale of vape pens, our correspondent set out to separate reality from hysteria.
Their Son's Heart Saved His Life. So He Rode 1,426 Miles to Meet Them.
An organ transplant recipient cycles across the country to meet the people who gave him his heart.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "We Only Wanted Their Happiness"
Children with internet implants.
Her Uighur Parents Were Model Chinese Citizens. It Didn’t Matter.
When Zulhumar Isaac’s parents disappeared amid a wave of detentions of ethnic minorities, she had to play a perilous game with the state to get them back.
Adventures in Publishing Outside the Gates
On the industry’s gatekeeping.
The Woman Shaking Up The Diamond Industry
Eira Thomas’s company has used radical new methods to find some of the biggest uncut gems in history.
Andrea Bernstein is a journalist and co-host of Trump, Inc., a podcast from WNYC and ProPublica. Her new book is American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.
“Hope is an action. And I feel that writing and documenting is an action. When I stop doing those things, I will be hopeless. But because I am still doing those things, it means that I still have hope… so long as we continue to be actors in the world, we can be hopeful human beings.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
A Battle for the Soul of Marfa
What happens when a wealthy patron wears out his welcome in the “strangest, most conflicted place in all of Texas”?
Mark Cuban Once Crashed the NBA’s Party. Now He Hosts It.
On the owner’s 20-year evolution from disruptive force to formidable constant.
Great Hollywood IPO That Wasn’t
Ari Emanuel’s failure to launch.
How 'West Side Story' Was Reborn
Inside the wildly ambitious effort to reimagine the classic musical for 2020.
The Sting
The inside story of a brutally botched undercover operation.
