The Wrong House

A case of mistaken identity in Michigan involving neo-Nazis, a terrified family with a newborn baby, and two people who share the name Daniel Harper.

Source: The Informant
Published: Jan 6, 2020
Length: 12 minutes (3,100 words)

A Scandal in Oxford: The Curious Case of the Stolen Gospel

A first-century fragment of the Book of Mark, Hobby Lobby, dissolved mummy masks, an Oxford professor named Obbink: manuscript nerds unite, this one’s a doozy.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jan 9, 2020
Length: 24 minutes (6,211 words)

Digital Distraction Is Bad for Creativity

Steven Heighton sat in silence with an author he admired — and learned how to write well.

Source: The Walrus
Published: Dec 27, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,911 words)

‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words

Memoirist Elizabeth Wurtzel was working on this, her final personal essay, when she passed away on January 7th, 2020 from metastatic breast cancer. In the piece she reveals that as her health was declining, her marriage was unraveling, and that she was still wrestling with new information her mother finally revealed a couple of years ago: that her biological father was not the same man as the father she grew up with. With an introduction and end note from her editor and friend, Garance Franke-Ruta.

Source: GEN
Published: Jan 8, 2020
Length: 19 minutes (4,830 words)

What I Did for (Strange) Love

As a teen, Laura Bond went all out to meet Depeche Mode — and to hang onto her best friend.

Author: Laura Bond
Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 9, 2020
Length: 8 minutes (2,218 words)

How New York’s Bagel Union Fought — and Beat — a Mafia Takeover

In the 1950s, organized crime in New York City wanted in on burgeoning bagel profits. The New York City Bagel Maker’s Union Local 338 — a membership made almost solely of Jewish bagel makers and their sons — wasn’t prepared to share the gelt.

Source: Grubstreet
Published: Jan 8, 2020
Length: 12 minutes (3,164 words)

Eartha Kitt, Coming Home

The many lives of an icon.

Source: Oxford American
Published: Nov 19, 2019
Length: 20 minutes (5,084 words)

The Man Who Chases Auroras to Push Away Darkness

“After tragedy followed Hugo Sanchez from El Salvador to Canada, he started photographing the northern lights, finding a new sense of purpose in the wintertime sky.”

Source: Outside
Published: Jan 6, 2020
Length: 16 minutes (4,121 words)

Where People Fall from the Sky

There’s a small section of South West London in which bodies — usually black or brown bodies — fall from the sky. For Maclean’s, Shannon Gormley reports on the dangers migrants face as they attempt find safety and greater economic opportunity in a new country. While some attempt travel secreted away in transport trucks, others choose the wheel well of a jetliner traveling to London Heathrow Airport in a treacherous, and almost always fatal bid to improve their fortunes.

Source: Maclean’s
Published: Jan 2, 2020
Length: 25 minutes (6,290 words)

How the Pinellas Sheriff’s Office Boosts Its Rape Stats Without Solving Cases

It’s 2020, and law enforcement still thinks that scared, reluctant, or uncooperative victims are lying.

Source: Tampa Bay Times
Published: Jan 5, 2020
Length: 12 minutes (3,199 words)