Everything is Fine

A personal essay in which Sara Fredman thinks about the voices in her life, as she raises young children and reckons with her fading father.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 14, 2019
Length: 10 minutes (2,523 words)

The Great Star Wars Heist

In 2017, the theft of a rare toy, a Boba “Rocket” Fett prototype that was never released for sale, rocked the Star Wars collecting community.

Published: Mar 7, 2019
Length: 21 minutes (5,356 words)

This Is What It’s Like Waking Up During Surgery

Mixing and matching potent drugs to alter consciousness and eliminate pain is a delicate medical art, and one that doesn’t work equally well on everyone — but because the same drugs that knock you out also impede memory formation, you might never know.

Source: Mosaic Science
Published: Mar 12, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,130 words)

On Owning Many Books

“I know that book collections become a pantomime of erudition, or a flex, as I often think when walking past the lit windows of tony brownstones in Brooklyn and catch sight of a large built-in bookcase. And yet when I have ever passed one without the tug of desire?”

Author: Mik Awake
Source: Popula
Published: Mar 12, 2019
Length: 5 minutes (1,358 words)

For Larger Customer, Eating Out Is Still a Daunting Experience

If I have to contort myself to get into a booth or knock a vase of flowers off a too-close table with my ass, my wallet and I are heading elsewhere.

Published: Mar 12, 2019
Length: 11 minutes (2,795 words)

A Wild Night at Weed Church

A wild night at weed church is, like, the calmest possible night anywhere else in the world.

Author: Jen Doll
Source: Cosmopolitan
Published: Mar 12, 2019
Length: 8 minutes (2,080 words)

The End of Poker Night

In this personal essay, Mindy Greenstein looks back on the gambling that was a big part of life with her Holocaust refugee parents.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 13, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,228 words)

Dropping Out With Lil Pump

Underneath this rapper’s diet of weed and codeine cough syrup is a teenage boy living out his celebrity fantasy, a boy who is trapped in the space between his public persona and his eighteen-year-old self.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Mar 12, 2019
Length: 17 minutes (4,443 words)

Where Drag Queens Drop from the Rafters

At Choke Hole—with its flesh overflow and swollen muscles, its ocean creatures and bodybuilder acrobats, its penguins and cockroaches, its green goblins and Silly String snot—the rest of the world’s body binaries, gender-presentation standards, and requirements for glamour go out the window.

Source: Deadspin
Published: Mar 12, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,300 words)

A Deeper South

On two road trips wandering the backroads of the South — taken 20 years apart — Pete Candler discovers many truths about his family and the place he comes from.

Published: Mar 10, 2019
Length: 36 minutes (9,110 words)