There’s a global movement of Facebook vigilantes who hunt pedophiles

“Pedophile hunting” or “creep catching” via Facebook is a contemporary version of a phenomenon as old as time: the humiliating act of public punishment. Criminologists even view it as a new expression of the town-square execution. But it’s also clearly a product of its era, a messy amalgam of influences such as reality TV and tabloid culture, all amplified by the internet.

Source: Quartz
Published: Jul 25, 2019
Length: 26 minutes (6,500 words)

A Doctor’s Deception

“For 30 years, Paul Shuen was one of the city’s most respected obstetricians. Then his nurses noticed something unusual about the way he delivered babies.” On one physician who put women and babies “in mortal danger” in a strange bid to solve his financial problems by defrauding the hospital billing system.

Source: Toronto Life
Published: Jul 24, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,640 words)

The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge

A Harvard Law professor who teaches a class on judgment wouldn’t seem like an obvious mark, would he?

Published: Jul 23, 2019
Length: 27 minutes (6,800 words)

How Scorned Women and a Casanova Cop Caught L.A.’s ‘Dine-and-Dash Dater’

Paul Gonzales scammed his online dates into buying him expensive dinners. Then they made him pay.

Author: Jeff Maysh
Source: The Daily Beast
Published: Jul 20, 2019
Length: 22 minutes (5,700 words)

Maybe It’s Lyme: What Happens When Illness Becomes an Identity?

Molly Fischer dives deep into the growing culture of “chronic Lyme,” a sort of wild West where a proliferation of unconventional approaches to diagnosis and treatment contradict the medical establishment’s contention that, despite some possible lasting symptoms, Lyme is not chronic; and where sufferers find identity and community.

Source: The Cut
Published: Jul 24, 2019
Length: 31 minutes (7,926 words)

Synecdoche, Illinois

A history of how Peoria became a stand-in for the country surrounding it.

Published: Jul 22, 2019
Length: 8 minutes (2,000 words)

Zero Tolerance

Battles have raged within the Trump administration over family separations, ICE raids and the president’s obsession with a wall. Together, they have remade homeland security.

Published: Jul 21, 2019
Length: 32 minutes (8,000 words)

Andy Ngo Has The Newest New Media Career. It’s Made Him A Victim And A Star.

It would be a mistake to think the violence against Andy Ngo came out of some vacuum-sealed ideological intolerance toward conservatives. Ngo had been building to a dramatic confrontation with the Portland far left for months, his star rising along with the severity of the encounters.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jul 18, 2019
Length: 28 minutes (7,200 words)

The Hidden Toll of the Golden State Killer

He raped and murdered dozens of people in California from the 1970s to 1980s. In his wake, a community was brought together by terror.

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Jul 22, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,700 words)

How NASA has kept Apollo moon rocks safe for 50 years

I’m not allowed to touch the moon rocks.

In the room where NASA stores the samples that Apollo astronauts brought to Earth decades ago, I peer at rocks and trays of dirt through glass. But my tour guides are firm: Nobody touches the moon rocks.

Published: Jul 15, 2019
Length: 14 minutes (3,500 words)