How Do We Preserve the Vanishing Foods of the Earth?

On biodiversity, wild plants, and the legacy of Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov.

Source: LitHub
Published: Oct 15, 2019
Length: 12 minutes (3,172 words)

Voyage Around My Cell

Turkish journalist Ahmet Altan has been jailed since 2016, as part of a media purge following the failed coup d’état. Life in prison has four loci: the bed, the chair, and yard, and the imagination.

Published: Oct 10, 2019
Length: 10 minutes (2,717 words)

One Night at Mount Sinai

Lisa Miller exposes Mount Sinai Hospital’s culture of sexism and bullying, which enabled emergency room doctor David Newman to sexually abuse female patients before one of them, Aja Newman (no relation) brought him down.

Source: The Cut
Published: Oct 15, 2019
Length: 27 minutes (6,899 words)

The Unbreakable Bond

Over 17 years ago, Houston Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins’ mom Sabrina Greenlee went blind after her boyfriend’s jealous girlfriend tossed acid in her face. After the assault, Greenlee avoided attending her son’s games, fearing people staring at her disfigurement. Today, she never misses a Texans home game from her spot in the end zone, where Hopkins’ sisters whisper game color commentary into her ear.

Author: Mina Kimes
Source: ESPN
Published: Oct 16, 2019
Length: 14 minutes (3,642 words)

A Miniature for My Mother

A family heirloom the author’s mother left her tells a story about death, how we mourn, and building a monument from her grief.

Published: Dec 1, 2018
Length: 23 minutes (5,794 words)

The Billion-Dollar High-Speed Internet Scam

Why secure actual signatures from partners on multi-million dollar contracts to install fiber-optic cable at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean when you can just forge them?

Published: Oct 8, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,209 words)

When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

The judge has no legal background. The lawyer gets a cut of any collections. And the people of Coffeyville end up buried in debt or in jail or both, just for trying to go to the doctor.

Source: ProPublica
Published: Oct 16, 2019
Length: 22 minutes (5,575 words)

A Survey of My Right Arm

When Ge Gao’s right arm suddenly became painful and her hand numb — inexplicably, and seemingly untreatably — the loss taught her just how intimately the hand and the self are connected.

Author: Ge Gao
Published: Sep 15, 2019
Length: 12 minutes (3,045 words)

‘My body feels like it is dying from the drugs that are meant to save me’: life as a cancer patient

When Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive breast cancer, she was confronted with a cure so poisonous that her body’s fluids became toxic to other people and corrosive to her body’s own tissues.

Author: Anne Boyer
Source: The Guardian
Published: Sep 26, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,578 words)

Everything He Wrote Was Good

Talented, troubled ─ unlike Willie Morris and Marshall Frady’s legacies, the life and work of Southern writer Johnny Greene has largely been forgotten, until another writer tried to piece it together. It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t entirely clear.

Source: Oxford American
Published: Sep 3, 2019
Length: 32 minutes (8,055 words)