The Mad Scramble to Claim the World’s Most Coveted Meteorite

Meteorite hunters Mike Farmer and Robert Ward travel to Carancas, a tiny village at 12,000 feet in Peru’s remote altiplano, to examine a crater in the hope to claim precious rock from space.

Source: Wired
Published: Dec 17, 2018
Length: 43 minutes (10,805 words)

Bastard: Neither of My Parents Was Exactly Who I Thought They Were

In this personal essay, author Elizabeth Wurtzel shares the bombshell that was recently dropped on her — that her father was not Donald Wurtzel, but rather civil rights era photojournalist Bob Adelman — and tries to make sense of her mother’s choice to keep the secret of her affair (and her daughter’s true paternity) for 50 years.

Source: The Cut
Published: Dec 26, 2018
Length: 18 minutes (4,714 words)

A Portrait of the Mother as a Young Girl

In this personal essay from our Fine Lines series, Marlene Adelstein finds herself transported back in time and consciousness via an inherited painting.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 26, 2018
Length: 12 minutes (3,190 words)

Jack, Jacqueline — Dad

A personal essay in which Yvonne Conza wrestles with the complexities of estrangement from her dying — complicated — dad.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 21, 2018
Length: 27 minutes (6,875 words)

The Jonestown We Don’t Know

“In truth, as I have come to learn, Jonestown does not point to a singular erratic Svengali but, rather, to fundamental aspects of both my adopted and my home countries.”

Published: Dec 21, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,854 words)

A History of Flavoring Food With Beaver Butt Juice

It’s called castoreum, and it does not actually come from a butt — it’s merely butt-adjacent.

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Dec 20, 2018
Length: 7 minutes (1,850 words)

The Story of Dyngo, a War Dog Brought Home From Combat

“As we made our way down the hall from my apartment to the front door of the building, he would drop his nose down to the seam of each door we passed and give it a swift but thorough sniff—Dyngo was still hunting for bombs.”

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Dec 21, 2018
Length: 17 minutes (4,310 words)

What Is Glitter?

It’s a literal tautology. A sparkly, sparkly tautology.

Published: Dec 21, 2018
Length: 13 minutes (3,273 words)

Four Days, 170,000 People, and One Metallica Concert Later, I Figured Out What Salesforce Is

Are you leveraging available garment storage space for fruit transport, or are you just happy to see me?

Source: Quartz
Published: Dec 19, 2018
Length: 24 minutes (6,157 words)

The Fresno Bee and the War on Local News

At a time when local newsrooms are shrinking or closing entirely — and Trump is calling the news media “the enemy of the people” — Zach Baron visits the reporters and editors of The Fresno Bee in California’s Central Valley, where Republican Rep. Devin Nunes declared war on the paper.

Author: Zach Baron
Source: GQ
Published: Dec 19, 2018
Length: 26 minutes (6,611 words)