Rick Steves Wants to Set You Free

Ever wonder what Rick Steves is like stoned? Me neither, and that was a mistake. Sam Anderson goes deep with the man who launched a thousand backpackers.

Published: Mar 21, 2019
Length: 31 minutes (7,885 words)

The Mortician and the Murderer

An incredible photo essay in which both the images and words tell the crazy story of imprisoned mortician David Sconce (up for parole in 2022). In the ’80s, Sconce turned his family’s California funeral home into a mass crematorium and black market body part- and organ-harvesting business.

Source: Topic
Published: Mar 21, 2019
Length: 15 minutes (3,783 words)

Song for My Father

“It was by seeing how much songs meant to my father, as a source of solace, or catharsis, or simply a kind of companionship, that I came to love them myself.”

Source: Popula
Published: Mar 19, 2019
Length: 26 minutes (6,651 words)

What Is Poetry?: A Non-Lecture

Lawrence Ferlinghetti delivered this ars poetica in 2003, upon receipt of the Frost Medal.

Published:
Length: 8 minutes (2,235 words)

Buc-ee’s: The Path to World Domination

A Texas-proud pit stop that’s really more of a travel center that’s really more of a flawless oasis, Buc-ee’s — the nirvana of convenience stores, honored triply nationwide for having the cleanest bathrooms and the most gas pumps and the best food — might just be the Disneyland of American rest stops. But will Georgians and Floridians love it as much as Texans do?

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Mar 1, 2019
Length: 24 minutes (6,100 words)

Her Time

Sometimes the question was if. Usually, though, it was when. Debra said that she would kill herself before she lost herself completely. She would wait for as long as she could because she did not want to die, but she wouldn’t wait too long.

Published: Mar 20, 2019
Length: 30 minutes (7,500 words)

Raising Really Good Hell for People Who Cannot

The only thing better than an interview with writer, scholar, and Twitter luminary Tressie McMillan Cottom is an interview with McMillan Cottom where the interviewer is Roxane Gay.

Published: Mar 20, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,810 words)

What If You Can’t Afford “A Room of One’s Own”?

For all the writers who rely on food stamps, day jobs, friends’ couches, and spouses to write their books with no guarantee of payment or publication, novelist Sandra Newman talks openly about her financial struggles. And she says: don’t feel ashamed. Create a room of your own anyway you can, even if it requires eating spaghetti with ketchup, and writing on a park bench.

Published: Mar 12, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,355 words)

Stepping Into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun

If you’ve ever read a newspaper, been in a city, or ridden a bus, you’ve seen an ad for Shen Yun. But what is it? Aside from the “organ harvesting, the homophobia, the anti-evolution ballad, and the Karl Marx apparition,” that is?

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Mar 19, 2019
Length: 14 minutes (3,625 words)

Good Enough to Eat? The Toxic Truth About Modern Food

“It makes no sense to presume that there has been a sudden collapse in willpower across all ages and ethnic groups since the 1960s.” What has changed? Food processing — and food marketing.

Author: Bee Wilson
Source: The Guardian
Published: Mar 19, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,065 words)