The Night the Lights Went Out

“I can also tell you that it can be unpleasant to be the freakshow guy whose brain spontaneously detonated. You don’t want doctors looking at your CAT scans incredulously and being like, ‘Hoo boy! You really did a number on your noggin there!'”

Source: Deadspin
Published: May 16, 2019
Length: 28 minutes (7,130 words)

This Gen X Mess

A fun, ranging package about Generation X. It includes essays on Evan Dando, The Rules, John Singleton, Grunge music and fashion, CK One, among other 90s touchstones,  plus a piece in which Caity Weaver rewinds 25 years to 1994 and spends a week only using what limited technologies existed then.

Published: May 14, 2019
Length: 94 minutes (23,739 words)

The Curious History of Crap — From Space Junk to Actual Poop

Ziya Tong writes a brief history of human waste — from “night soil” to space junk — in an excerpt from her new book, The Reality Bubble.

Author: Ziya Tong
Source: Backchannel
Published: May 14, 2019
Length: 17 minutes (4,374 words)

Suffering Unseen: The Dark Truth Behind Wildlife Tourism

Hey, woke American tourist in Thailand: the same organization running that cruelty-free elephant viewing experience at the eco-lodge also owns the cruelty-infused elephant show down the road, and the elephants are the same.

Published: May 15, 2019
Length: 25 minutes (6,295 words)

The Cure For Your Next Infection May Come From Sewage

As our resistance to antibiotics soars, scientists find hope in phages – helpful viruses found in particularly disgusting places.

Source: Vox
Published: May 14, 2019
Length: 6 minutes (1,587 words)

The GOP Has Its Final Anti-Abortion Victory in Sight

They’ve been playing a long, long game that leads to the death of Roe v. Wade by a thousand procedural cuts. Or for women, death by botched underground abortion.

Source: Slate
Published: May 14, 2019
Length: 8 minutes (2,221 words)

He Trots the Air

“The end was coming for Roany, a strong and beautiful horse who’d been at the center of Pam Houston’s life for 25 years. What she wanted for him was simple: a peaceful exit, lifted by the touch of human hands.”

Source: Outside
Published: May 14, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,489 words)

Indigenous Educators Fight for an Accurate History of California

For too long, California’s public school history curriculum has reduced Indigenous people to peaceful workers at the Spanish missions, and omitted their enslavement and suffering. Can California Assembly Bill 738 correct that?

Published: Apr 29, 2019
Length: 18 minutes (4,706 words)

Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild

Joe Schreibvogel AKA Joe Exotic AKA the Tiger King collected exotic animals and very young husbands at his private Oklahoma zoo. He’s now in jail, found guilty of hiring people to kill an outspoken critic of his who owns of a big cat sanctuary in Florida.

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: May 9, 2019
Length: 31 minutes (7,897 words)

Walking Time Bomb

“I thought, Is trying to direct a movie really what you want? Don’t you want to just rest? Or be with your family? And Stacy has said to me, ‘Why should I stop doing what I love? What am I going to do? Just sit in this chair and die?’”

Source: Vulture
Published: May 14, 2019
Length: 27 minutes (6,840 words)