China’s Mistress Dispellers

The mistress, or what is known in Chinese as a xiao san, or “Little Third,” has become a problem in China, and a new job has sprung up to battle these emotional and financial third wheels: the mistress dispeller. Part private investigator, part emotional confident, the mistress dispeller is tasked with ending the relationship by any means necessary.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 20, 2017
Length: 25 minutes (6,264 words)

A Mother’s Death, a Botched Inquiry and a Sheriff at War

After a law enforcement officer reinvestigates the death of a 24-year-old mother, who was found shot on the night she broke up with her deputy sheriff boyfriend, one of Florida’s most powerful sheriffs becomes antagonized and launches a personal years-long attack against the investigator.

Published: Jun 17, 2017
Length: 30 minutes (7,743 words)

In Defectors From the North, Doctors in South Korea Find Hope — and Data

A program tracking the health of North Korean refugees rests on the premise that someday, health care will once again be a shared responsibility.

Source: Undark
Published: Jun 20, 2017
Length: 22 minutes (5,660 words)

How to End a Life

Even though medically assisted death has been legal in Canada for a year, it remains controversial. Although some palliative care doctors — who believe in providing physical and psychological comforts to patients, but not in hastening death — are vehemently opposed to what they view as an immoral act, other doctors are slowly coming to terms with the patient’s new right to die in cases where death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

Source: Toronto Life
Published: May 23, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,582 words)

The Ideal Iceland May Only Exist in Your Mind

Taffy Brodesser-Akner goes to Iceland in search of relief and discovers that the island nation, with its quirky puffins and lunar landscape and crowds upon crowds of American tourists, lends itself well to the pursuit of escape.

Source: AFAR
Published: Jun 13, 2017
Length: 16 minutes (4,000 words)

The Scarface of Sex: The Millionaire Playboy Who Murdered His Way to the Top of Porn

Michael Thevis built a lucrative pornography empire in the 1960s and ’70s only to spend the end of his life in prison. His family opened his personal diaries to a journalist for the first time to get the whole, crooked, tragic story.

Author: Jeff Maysh
Source: The Daily Beast
Published: Jun 16, 2017
Length: 31 minutes (7,858 words)

The Ken Doll Reboot: Beefy, Cornrowed, and Pan-Racial

A behind-the-scenes look at the redesign process of the new, diverse lineup of Ken Dolls.

Source: GQ
Published: Jun 20, 2017
Length: 16 minutes (4,104 words)

Roxane Gay’s New Memoir About Her Weight May Be Her Most Feminist—and Revealing—Act Yet

Marisa Meltzer profiles Roxane Gay as the prolific author prepares to go on tour to support Hunger, a book she calls “by far the hardest book I’ve ever had to write.” In it, Gay reflects on what it’s like to live in a world that does not accommodate her body and how she “turned to food for numbness and protection” after being gang raped as a child.

Source: Elle
Published: Jun 14, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,874 words)

Mahershala Ali Thinks We Can Still Make this Country Great

Even though his first and last names get him profiled, even after working on four seasons of the dark political TV series House of Cards, Moonlight‘s star Mahershala Ali feels hopeful about America’s future.

Source: GQ
Published: Jun 19, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,283 words)

A Portrait of the Artist as an Undocumented Immigrant

A Mexican writer recalls undocumented life at a restaurant in New York and as a nanny in Connecticut.

Source: Unnamed Press
Published: Jun 20, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,894 words)