Out of Sight, Out of Mind

“Prison families, researchers, and even TDCJ officials agree that visitation is a critical lifeline for incarcerated people, and integral to their rehabilitation. Research has shown that visits with loved ones can maintain and strengthen social ties that can help prevent criminal behavior during and after incarceration.

 

Source: Texas Observer
Published: Jan 22, 2021
Length: 8 minutes (2,100 words)

‘Talk About First World Problems’: What Would the Pandemic Have Been Like in 2005?

How would he have handled a pandemic? It’s hard to imagine him getting involved in the sort of denialism, laced with conspiracy theory and a dash of anti-Chinese racism, that the Trump administration has fostered.”

Source: The Independent
Published: Dec 20, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,900 words)

Was I Wrong to Fall For a Cheating Cat?

“Every time another new post would go up, a friend would regularly call me out in my comments: “IT’S NOT YOUR CAT.””

Source: BBC
Published: Dec 31, 2020
Length: 8 minutes (2,100 words)

The Cruise Ship Suicides

Cruise crew members experienced a “more extreme version of the household lockdowns that have sent people tumbling into depression.”

Published: Dec 30, 2020
Length: 18 minutes (4,587 words)

Where Year Two of the Pandemic Will Take Us

“As vaccines roll out, the U.S. will face a choice about what to learn and what to forget.”

Author: Ed Yong
Source: The Atlantic
Published: Dec 29, 2020
Length: 25 minutes (6,265 words)

The Factories in the Camps

Forced labor on a vast scale is taking place inside Xinjiang’s detention centers.

Source: BuzzFeed News
Published: Dec 28, 2020
Length: 16 minutes (4,120 words)

The Secret Formula

“Could shrunken heads from the Amazon hold the key to curing cancer? One man thought so—and spent a lifetime trying to prove it.”

Source: The Atavist
Published: Dec 30, 2020
Length: 70 minutes (17,500 words)

Has Thomas Becket’s Treasured ‘Little Book’ Been Found?

“There was no jewelled Anglo Saxon silver-gilt binding – this would have been torn off and melted down during the Reformation, but here was a book, de Hamel now felt, that was surely a lost holy relic of the Middle Ages.”

Source: BBC
Published: Dec 27, 2020
Length: 14 minutes (3,540 words)

Inside India’s booming dark data economy

Thanks to lax privacy laws and high consumer demand, details on everything from how you shop to who you date are all for sale.”

Source: Rest of World
Published: Dec 22, 2020
Length: 16 minutes (4,000 words)

A brother’s grief, a father’s joy, and learning to live with both at Christmas.

For us, and for so many families around the world, this Christmas is different. This is the first Christmas without Bethany, and the first with Luke. Our son was born six days after my little sister died as she slept in her dorm room. She had COVID-19. She was 20.”

Source: The Athletic
Published: Dec 25, 2020
Length: 18 minutes (4,700 words)