From Cannabis to Cabernet

Lebanon has produced wine for thousands of years. When Lebanese farmers started growing cannabis and opium poppies in the 1940s, the region became one of the world’s largest narcotics trafficking hubs, and the US wanted it stopped. Some farmers have been converting their fields to grapes, and reinvigorating Lebanon’s wine culture.

Published: Aug 23, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,792 words)

The Fantasy of an Enemy

“It’s still raining in Houston, and Game of Thrones is not a show about climate change, not really, because it’s possible to win The Game of Thrones.”

Author: Aaron Bady
Published: Aug 29, 2017
Length: 14 minutes (3,635 words)

Hidden Costs: When Prison Labor Gets Upsold as Artisanal Kitsch

An expose on the Maine Department of Correction Industries woodshop and other prison-based businesses like it, which frame their exploitive inmate manufacturing programs as rehabilitative when in reality they’re more like state-sanctioned slavery.

Source: The New Inquiry
Published: Aug 28, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,838 words)

America, Home of the Transactional Marriage

The disappearance of good jobs for people with less education has made it harder for them to start, and sustain, relationships.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Aug 20, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,400 words)

Reflections of an Accidental Florist

When a painter stumbles into a floral career, she sees the ugly truth behind a colorful, fragrant industry.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 1, 2017
Length: 21 minutes (5,375 words)

America’s First Addiction Epidemic

The alcohol epidemic devastated Native American communities, leading to crippling poverty, astonishingly high mortality rates, the desperate exodus of entire nations — and a successful sobriety movement.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 29, 2017
Length: 30 minutes (7,526 words)

You Are the Product

Facebook is really in the surveillance business, and it uses our data to market us stuff. Mark Zuckerberg wants to make sure you don’t know this, because if you did, why would you still use Facebook?

Published: Aug 17, 2017
Length: 35 minutes (8,943 words)

Shock Tactics

A 911 plea for help, a Taser shot, a death — and the mounting toll of stun guns.

Source: Reuters
Published: Aug 22, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,850 words)

Teaching White Students Showed Me The Difference Between Power and Privilege

In a poignant personal essay, Kiese Laymon examines black intergenerational wealth and class privilege.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Aug 28, 2017
Length: 7 minutes (1,915 words)

The Exile

In January, 2017 — before Trump’s inauguration — physician Khaled Almilaji spent a week in Syria to check on his many humanitarian projects, leaving his pregnant wife Jehan behind in the United States. Expecting to return well before Trump’s inauguration, Khaled discovered at the airport that his visa — along with those of 40 other medical students, mostly from the Middle East — had been revoked in the month before Trump took office.

Source: Toronto Life
Published: Aug 16, 2017
Length: 16 minutes (4,092 words)