H-E-B Forever

“Why Texas’s favorite store is the cultiest cult grocer in America.”

Source: Eater
Published: Dec 11, 2018
Length: 7 minutes (1,935 words)

He Helped Build an Artists’ Utopia. Now He Faces Trial for 36 Deaths There.

“Max Harris did chores and collected rent at the artists’ warehouse where he lived. Now he faces trial for the deaths at a concert there — including some of his close friends.”

Published: Dec 12, 2018
Length: 45 minutes (11,312 words)

How the IRS Was Gutted

Tax evaders, rejoice: the Internal Revenue Service may not have enough resources to come after the vast majority of those offshore bank accounts. It also doesn’t have enough resources to investigate white collar crime, curb suspicious corporate activity, shore up the nation’s rising budget deficit, or answer tens of millions of law-abiding taxpayers’ questions. And now, just when morale is at its lowest, the IRS stands to lose a third of its most valuable and experienced workers next year as the organization’s most senior cohort becomes eligible for retirement.

Source: ProPublica
Published: Dec 11, 2018
Length: 22 minutes (5,600 words)

American Ghostwriter

An adventure as the Man Behind the Curtain for memoirs of the uber-rich.

Source: The Baffler
Published: Dec 1, 2018
Length: 14 minutes (3,500 words)

Is the Women’s March Melting Down?

An investigation into the leadership, organizational and financial status, and affiliations of the increasingly fractured Women’s March. Among many other explosive issues, the article interrogates the alleged anti-semitism of some of the March’s leaders, who support the outwardly anti-semitic, misogynistic, and anti-LBGTQ Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan.

Source: Tablet Magazine
Published: Dec 10, 2018
Length: 41 minutes (10,467 words)

How WhatsApp Fuels Fake News and Violence in India

“IndiaSpend, a data journalism outlet, pegs the figure at 33 killed in 69 incidents of mob violence between January 2017 and July 2018.”

Source: Wired
Published: Dec 12, 2018
Length: 25 minutes (6,475 words)

Queens of Infamy: Zenobia

In third-century Syria, a widowed monarch dared to be wildly ambitious — and almost brought the Roman Empire to its knees.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 11, 2018
Length: 18 minutes (4,570 words)

The Truth About Green Book

Peter Farrelly’s Green Book, a “true story” about an Italian-American bouncer who escorts a black pianist on a tour of the Jim Crow South in 1962, is emerging as an awards season frontrunner. But the family of the pianist, Dr. Shirley, has dismissed the film, not just for its factual inaccuracies, but for essentially revising and rewriting a black man’s identity.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Dec 11, 2018
Length: 10 minutes (2,501 words)

Ghosts of Highway 20

In a five-part series, The Oregonian pieces together the complicated untold story of the women who were raped and went missing on a single Oregon highway. One man appears to be responsible for it all.

Source: The Oregonian
Published: Dec 2, 2018
Length: 49 minutes (12,295 words)

‘Do I Really Want to Hurt My Baby?’

“Intrusive thoughts are virtually universal among both new mothers and new fathers. ‘If they say they don’t have them, he told me, ‘they’re lying.'”

Published: Dec 5, 2018
Length: 21 minutes (5,425 words)