Holy Warriors Against the Welfare State

A trip to the DeVos seat of power in Michigan, home of evangelism and Amway.

Source: The Baffler
Published: Feb 6, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,348 words)

Haruki Murakami’s Metaphysics Of Food

Elaheh Nozari explores food in the work of Haruki Murakami: how food not only offers comfort and nutrition, but about how what we eat speaks to our emotional state and who we are as people.

Source: The Awl
Published: Feb 3, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,264 words)

Saving Family No. 417

In Maclean’s, Michael Friscolanti reports on the 14 everyday Canadians who — galvanized by the sickening image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi face-down on the beach — banded together to sponsor a family of Syrian refugees whose names they did not know, in a bid to “do what’s right. To do something.” In a story reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan, Maclean’s travelled to war-torn Beirut to find and interview Amal Alkhalaf, the single-mother and her three children, dubbed “family no. 417.”

Source: Maclean’s
Published: Jan 13, 2016
Length: 44 minutes (11,207 words)

The New Underground Railroad

Facing tighter U.S. immigration restrictions, some refugees are risking their lives in the dead of winter by walking for miles across the U.S. border into Canada.

Source: Maclean’s
Published: Feb 3, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,340 words)

Never Leave

The ramble is an age-old English tradition, and this ruminative essay uses that meditative format to talk with many English people about immigration, race and the changing face of England, and try to make sense of where the UK is moving post-Brexit.

Published: Feb 2, 2017
Length: 17 minutes (4,452 words)

The Unimaginable, Infamous Case of Pam Hupp

Would somebody really stab a sick friend and shove her own mother off a balcony to get cash she’d receive in a few years anyway, then shoot a perfect stranger just to twist the plot?

Published: Jan 19, 2017
Length: 51 minutes (12,893 words)

Mother Science

Uterine transplants are frontier science, but they offer hope of possibility for trans women and others seeking parenthood.

Published: Feb 6, 2017
Length: 21 minutes (5,316 words)

How America Lost Its Identity

From the outside looking in: reporter Holger Stark, who spent the past four years as Der Spiegel’s Washington correspondent, asks “What led this once mighty nation into decline?”

Source: Der Spiegel
Published: Jan 27, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,192 words)

When Things Go Missing

On two forms of loss: grief and the misplacement of everyday objects.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Feb 6, 2017
Length: 27 minutes (6,996 words)

Searching for California’s Lost Viking Treasure Ship

Legends say that a 16th century Spanish galleon traveled into what’s now California’s arid interior and got stranded, leaving its hull and cargo buried in the desert for modern treasure-hunters to find. Or not; the story isn’t verified. No one agrees on the details, whether it was Spanish or Viking, in California or Mexico. People still search for it. What’s real? Should people believe any of this?

Source: Newsweek
Published: Feb 2, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,093 words)