Adrian Piper’s Show at MoMA is the Largest Ever for a Living Artist. Why Hasn’t She Seen It?

Thomas Chatterton Williams profiles the conceptual artist and philosopher Adrian Piper.

Published: Jun 27, 2018
Length: 32 minutes (8,238 words)

Jonathan Franzen Is Fine With All of It

“Most of the people who have complaints with me aren’t reading me,” says Jonathan Franzen, but he’s a process guy. He doesn’t read anything by his readers. They could write the book on reading him, but he wouldn’t read it and neither would they.

Published: Jun 26, 2018
Length: 23 minutes (5,915 words)

The ‘Sex Cult’ That Preached Empowerment

How did a former television star and a self-help guru convince women to join an organization named Nxivm that’s now being accused of running a “sex-slave cult”? It turns out that “humans are highly programmable.”

Published: May 30, 2018
Length: 34 minutes (8,632 words)

The Prisoners Who Care for the Dying and Get Another Chance at Life

How some inmates serving life sentences in prison work 10-15 hours a day, seven days a week so that terminally ill fellow prisoners do not have to die alone.

Published: May 16, 2018
Length: 15 minutes (3,841 words)

The Baby-Formula Crime Ring

It’s pricey, it’s portable, its users need it constantly, and retailers love to buy it at a discount. All of which makes it a perfect product to steal.

Published: May 2, 2018
Length: 25 minutes (6,466 words)

A Lynching’s Long Shadow

The story of Elwood Higginbothom, a sharecropper and possible labor activist lynched in Oxford, Mississippi in 1935, is told to his descendants for the first time.

Published: Apr 25, 2018
Length: 32 minutes (8,018 words)

How Janelle Monáe Found Her Voice

Jenna Wortham profiles actress/singer/songwriter Janelle Monáe on the eve of the debut of her newest album, “Dirty Computer.” With many sounds vetted by the late Prince, and an accompanying film, the album will the be artist’s first release without the use of her alter ego, the android Cindi Mayweather, and will touch on themes of non-binary gender identity and female sexuality.

Published: Apr 19, 2018
Length: 33 minutes (8,296 words)

Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis

Reporter Linda Villarosa reports on the racial disparities in health care that contribute to black women being three to four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as their white counterparts, and black infants being more than twice as likely to die as white infants. Threaded through the piece is the story of Simone Landrum, who lost a baby girl after doctors dismissed her pain and symptoms of pre-eclampsia, but delivered a healthy son after receiving the help of a doula through that subsequent pregnancy.

Published: Apr 11, 2018
Length: 42 minutes (10,612 words)

What the Arlee Warriors Were Playing For

On February 23, the Arlee Warriors, a Class C high-school basketball team from the Flathead Indian Reservation, announced they were dedicating their tournament to “all the families that have fallen victim to the loss of a loved one due to the pressures of life.”

Author: Abe Streep
Published: Apr 4, 2018
Length: 36 minutes (9,200 words)

Dark Zones

Sixty-six year old Bill Ewasko never returned from a hike in Joshua Tree National Park. He’s one of 150,000 lost hiker cases used to create lost-person-behavior algorithms, and he’s the focus of a large grassroots search by amateur investigators. None of this was enough to find Ewasko, but these kinds of searches are enough to save the living.

Published: Mar 22, 2018
Length: 17 minutes (4,481 words)