Rhiannon Giddens and What Folk Music Means

John Jeremiah Sullivan’s profile of American folk singer, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Rihannon Giddens includes a history of the influential, but little known black antebellum fiddler Frank Johnson, as well as the 1898 racial massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 13, 2019
Length: 37 minutes (9,258 words)

How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

This is what happens when a company concerns itself more with marketing than with retail service.

Published: May 7, 2019
Length: 7 minutes (1,957 words)

My Childhood in a Cult

Actor, writer and screenwriter Guinevere Turner recalls growing up in a cult called “The Lyman Family,” and reveals its lingering effects on her, many years after her departure from it.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 6, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,209 words)

Tracy Morgan Turns the Drama of His Life Into Comedy

Vinson Cunningham profiles Tracy Morgan as the comic films the second season of his Jordan Peele-produced TBS show “The Last O.G.” and explores the complex audience dynamics of black comedy.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 6, 2019
Length: 42 minutes (10,704 words)

If You Should Find Yourself in the Dark

A personal essay in which Debbie Weingarten considers the anxieties of mothering and being human in a volatile world.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 9, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,460 words)

Kokoro Yasume

Perched between her family’s Unitarianism, her Japanese mother’s shinto, and a world infused with beauty and death, an atheist daughter wrestles with mythology, ritual, and ways to stay connected to who she is, where she comes from, and where is going.

Published: May 3, 2019
Length: 17 minutes (4,322 words)

The Birth-Tissue Profiteers

Stem cell purveyors suggest that they “ease” every aging-related malady from arthritis and erectile dysfunction to wrinkles and everything in between. What don’t these stem cell snake-oil salespeople have? Any science to prove these claims or any scruples about preying on the vulnerable at tens of thousands of dollars per injection.

Source: ProPublica
Published: May 7, 2019
Length: 27 minutes (6,854 words)

Friends of the Pod

“Podcasts intensify our saturation while pretending to relieve it. It’s like a voluntary authoritarian state, except instead of state-funded sitcoms, we have Marc Maron. But what would we do without it? Die, probably. Be murdered. Become a true-crime podcast. Don’t forget us when we’re gone; please rate us on iTunes.”

Source: n+1
Published: May 6, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,326 words)

The Price of Plenty: How Beef Changed America

Before there was modern agribusiness or assembly-line production plants, there was the American beef industry.

Source: The Guardian
Published: May 7, 2019
Length: 17 minutes (4,415 words)

The Joy of Watching (and Rewatching) Movies So Bad They’re Good

In this personal and critical essay, Michael Musto sings the praises of his favorite cinematic clunkers.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 7, 2019
Length: 8 minutes (2,090 words)