The Curse of the Bahia Emerald, a Giant Green Rock That Ruins Lives

Meet the schemers, investors, and dreamers who were bewitched by a big green rock that might not actually be worth anything.

Source: Wired
Published: Mar 2, 2017
Length: 25 minutes (6,487 words)

The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness

The gay community has made large strides in terms of legal and social acceptance in the last few decades, but the rates of depression, loneliness and substance abuse among gay men have remained unchanged. Hobbes examines why.

Source: HuffPost
Published: Mar 2, 2017
Length: 27 minutes (6,888 words)

Autism’s hidden habit

Addicted and autistic? The unexpected biological and psychological commonalities of addiction and autism and some new science which suggests that combination may be more common than you think.

Source: Spectrum
Published: Mar 1, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,845 words)

Team Plagiarizes Golden State Warriors. Team Is Undefeated.

Perennial junior college basketball power South Plains college finished the 2015-16 season with a 21-9 record—too uneven for head coach Steve Green. As Scott Cacciola details in this exhaustively thorough piece about SPC, which is undefeated and about to begin its path to ‘Hutch’ (shorthand for Hutchinson, Kansas, where the juco national title game is held every year), Green remade his squad in the image of the Golden State Warriors. The Texans even have their own version of Draymond Green (Brooklyn’s Jahlil Tripp) and Steph Curry (Jordan Brangers)—but no Kevin Durant (yet). As Green tells Cacciola, “I just want guys who can shoot now. If you have somebody on the floor who can’t score, you’re playing four against five. They just don’t guard them.”

Published: Mar 2, 2017
Length: 7 minutes (1,964 words)

My Mother’s Murder

Leah Carroll assembles the details surrounding her mother’s murder at the hands of organized crime, after her mother mysteriously disappeared in 1984, when Leah was four years old.

Published: Feb 28, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,929 words)

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London

How women writers and artists, from Virginia Woolf to Sophie Calle, found inspiration and freedom by navigating cities on foot. An excerpt from Lauren Elkin’s new book.

Published: Mar 2, 2017
Length: 26 minutes (6,613 words)

End of a Golden Age

Now that many Americans fear we’re entering a dark period of decline, it’s useful to analyze the industrialized world’s post-War period of economic prosperity to understand what made it exceptional, and why we cannot recreate it.

Source: Aeon
Published: Feb 22, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,300 words)

The Keepers of the Light

New Orleans’s complicated history with the Mardi Gras flambeaux — the (usually black) torch carriers who, for years, lit the way for the festival’s (usually white) parades.

Source: Oxford American
Published: Feb 23, 2017
Length: 31 minutes (7,820 words)

Why Ever Stop Playing Video Games

Many Americans have replaced work hours with game play — and ended up happier. Which wouldn’t surprise most gamers.

Author: Frank Guan
Source: www.vulture.com
Published: Feb 22, 2017
Length: 22 minutes (5,642 words)

The Long Tail of the Attica Prison Riot

On the aftermath of the Attica Prison riot and how the state covered up the truth: a grisly state-initiated mass murder in the name of justice and order. Of the 43 dead, 29 inmates were killed — many of them shot in the back or executed at close range as the state attempted to regain control of the prison.

Published: Feb 21, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,509 words)