My Summer at an Indian Call Center

On his first day, Nishant donned his headset, dialed the number on the screen and was connected to a 60-year-old woman in Tennessee. She had an outstanding hospital bill for $400. “I told her, ‘Just pay this, what’s the problem?’ She told me, ‘You don’t understand, I can’t pay.'” They talked for 45 minutes, and the woman cried as she told Nishant about the Iraq War and its toll on American families. “By this time I’m crying also,” Nishant said.

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Jul 5, 2011
Length: 19 minutes (4,819 words)

The Spam Factory’s Dirty Secret

“The line speed, the line speed,” Lachance told the AP, when recounting patient interviews. “That’s what we heard over and over again.” The line had been set at 900 heads per hour when the brain harvesting first began in 1996—meaning that the rate had increased a full 50 percent over the decade, whereas the number of workers had hardly risen. Garcia told me that the speed made it hard to keep up. Second, to match the pace, the company switched from a foot-operated trigger to an automatic system tripped by inserting the nozzle into the brain cavity, but sometimes the blower would misfire and spatter.

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Jun 27, 2011
Length: 33 minutes (8,294 words)

Where the Buffalo Roam

The notion that people living on the Plains should cede their land to bison is rooted in a deliberately heretical 1987 article in the academic magazine Planning, titled “The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust.” Authored by professors Frank and Deborah Popper (he teaches at Princeton and Rutgers; she teaches at Princeton and the City University of New York), it suggested that a large portion of the Great Plains—comprising most of Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, and parts of six other Western and Midwestern states—would become almost completely depopulated within a single generation, and should therefore be “returned to its original pre-white state,” i.e., a bison range.

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Apr 4, 2011
Length: 21 minutes (5,326 words)

Dan Rather: Inside Mark Cuban’s Gilded Cage

Neither Cuban nor his executives vet story ideas or scripts. Cuban just writes the checks and watches Rather’s show when it airs. This independence comes at a price, however. During his 44 years with CBS News, Rather became perhaps the nation’s best-known newsman, reaching 18 million viewers a night at his peak. HDNet is only available in about 20 million households—top 25 outlets like USA or the Discovery Channel boast more than 100 million. And since Cuban won’t pay for Nielsen ratings, Rather has little idea how many people are watching. HDNet’s mainstays are mixed martial arts, pro wrestling, a travel show hosted by women in bikinis, and “Girls Gone Wild Presents: Search for the Hottest Girl in America.”

Author: Jim Rendon
Source: Mother Jones
Published: Mar 7, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,099 words)

Abusive Afghan Husbands Want This Woman Dead

For Afghan women, self-immolation has become a way to externalize private injustice, to push hidden pain into the public square. They are expressing a demand for human rights in a culture that does not allow them to articulate that wish. As chief prosecutor, Maria Bashir has sought to help women voice their grievances in the courts instead of by the gas can.

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Feb 8, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,334 words)

The Ongoing Mysteries of the Elizabeth Smart Case

A guilty verdict for Brian David Mitchell is in. But the questions the case raised about polygamy, prophecy, and insanity remain murky. “We knew Brian David Mitchell as a temple moth and thought he was crazy but harmless. This is why we didn’t suspect him, even when he walked around downtown with Elizabeth in tow, her face covered by a veil. It’s about the strangest thing that’s ever happened in Salt Lake City, and it could only have happened here, in this place and time, perhaps caused by the aura emanating from the temple itself.”

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Dec 14, 2010
Length: 24 minutes (6,065 words)

What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?

From Detroit: A nighttime raid. A reality TV crew. A sleeping seven-year-old. What one tragedy can teach us about the unraveling of America’s middle class.

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Nov 9, 2010
Length: 31 minutes (7,927 words)

End of the Line

GM guaranteed the people of Janesville, Wisconsin, a good wage for a hard job. Those were the days.

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,971 words)

Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle

Obama sips it. Paris Hilton loves it. Mary J. Blige won’t sing without it. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 15 minutes (3,943 words)