Christ in the Garden of Endless Breadsticks

Helen Rosner’s loving ode to Olive Garden, another chapter in Eater’s Death of Chains series on the slow decline of middlebrow chain restaurants.

Source: Eater
Published: Oct 3, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,500 words)

Justin Bieber Made a New Jersey Suburb Lose Its Mind This Summer

Justin Bieber spent his summer in a quiet American suburb doing what most people do: He went to the mall, purchased beverages at Starbucks, and played basketball in a driveway. His appearances caught a community off guard and made them ravenous for gossip.

Published: Oct 1, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,300 words)

The Touch of Madness

David Dobbs writes about Nev Jones, a psychologist who experienced psychosis as a Ph.D student, and psychosis more broadly in historic and global context.

Published: Oct 3, 2017
Length: 44 minutes (11,231 words)

A History of American Protest Music: ‘We Have Got Tools and We Are Going to Succeed’

Lead Belly, Lee Hays, and the hammer songs that powered the folk movement.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 4, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,439 words)

A History of American Protest Music: This Is the Hammer That Killed John Henry

How a folk hero inspired one of the most covered songs in American history.

 

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 4, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,465 words)

Production of a Lifetime: Whitney Houston and Clive Davis

Race and the cutthroat music business played significant roles in Whitney Houston’s personal and career struggles, but Houston’s inability to openly embrace her sexual orientation seems to have played a role, too. This is especially tragic considering that Clive Davis, the man who signed Houston at age 19 and helped build her career, ultimately came out himself and would not publicly address the issue.

Published: Sep 30, 2017

Preet Bharara Is Now in the Trump-Opposition Business

A profile of Preet Bharara, who earlier this year was fired by Donald Trump from his position as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and has a new career as a podcaster. Bharara, known as a crusader against corporate corruption, will decipher legal issues on the podcast — Stay Tuned with Preet, launched last week through his younger brother’s holding company, Some Spider Studios — including but not limited to those having to do with investigations of the president and his business dealings.

Published: Oct 2, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,123 words)

Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For

Why do consumers let the world’s biggest water-bottling company sell us water that’s already ours?

Published: Sep 21, 2017
Length: 14 minutes (3,597 words)

Mayonnaise, Disrupted

Is Josh Tetrick’s vegan-mayo company just another over-promising, under-delivering startup?

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Oct 2, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,872 words)

Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?

In a little more than a decade, Facebook has become one of the most important technology companies in the world. But as it’s grown, the company has had to try to figure out how to govern its 2 billion users, something it hasn’t quite managed. In light of that, Max Read grapples with an increasingly important problem: What exactly is Mark Zuckerberg’s world-spanning empire?

Author: Max Read
Published: Oct 1, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,980 words)