The Trippy Science of Psychedelic Studies

Psychedelic substances show great promise treating everything from cancer to depression, anxiety to alcoholism. To help understand this burgeoning field of inquiry, one writer participates in a study. Tripping taught her as much about the promises as the dangers of medical psychedelics.

Source: Elemental
Published: Aug 22, 2019
Length: 10 minutes (2,520 words)

Faulty Equipment, Lapsed Training, Repeated Warnings: How a Preventable Disaster Killed Six Marines

“Marine commanders did not act on dozens of pleas for additional manpower, machinery and time. When a training exercise ended in death, leadership blamed the very men they had neglected.”

Source: ProPublica
Published: Dec 30, 2019
Length: 37 minutes (9,343 words)

On No Longer Being a Hysterical Woman

“Depression says that if I were more grateful, did more yoga poses, took more magnesium, pushed myself more, I’d be better. Depression is a white supremacist, a malignant narcissist, a rape apologist, a gaslighter, Iago, a sadist, a masochist, a hot Lego underfoot, a mind made hell. No amount of privilege, or gratitude, could undo these incurable, chronic diseases.”

Published: Jan 6, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,865 words)

Infatuation

Deena ElGenaidi considers the ways in which adoring Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine from afar in her teens and early 20s provided a safe outlet for expressing desire.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 6, 2020
Length: 14 minutes (3,733 words)

(Who Gets to) Just Up and Move

Nicole Walker contemplates the nature of migration, and realizes there are two places you can never escape: the planet and your own head.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 3, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,273 words)

Language Barrier

For migrants who speak Mayan languages, a grassroots group of interpreters is often their only hope for receiving asylum.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 30, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,960 words)

If My Scars Could Talk

Tega Oghenechovwen contemplates the ways in which acute childhood trauma can infect and compromise relationships later in life.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 2, 2020
Length: 15 minutes (3,777 words)

Lost in Summerland

At the world’s largest gathering of psychics and mediums, two brothers confront a painful secret.

Source: The Atavist
Published: Dec 30, 2019
Length: 38 minutes (9,600 words)

The Year in Pivoting to Video

For many magazine editors recently, work has meant a brief span of highly satisfying work and eventually losing their job to make room for videos that people may not even want to watch online.

Author: David Roth
Source: Hazlitt
Published: Dec 23, 2019
Length: 10 minutes (2,520 words)

The Gay Horizon

“The path of totality is dark. I didn’t know what to expect, but it’s dark.”

Published: Nov 25, 2019
Length: 20 minutes (5,091 words)