A Mother’s Death, a Botched Inquiry and a Sheriff at War

After a law enforcement officer reinvestigates the death of a 24-year-old mother, who was found shot on the night she broke up with her deputy sheriff boyfriend, one of Florida’s most powerful sheriffs becomes antagonized and launches a personal years-long attack against the investigator.

Published: Jun 17, 2017
Length: 30 minutes (7,743 words)

In California, Finding ‘Fat City’ With the Man Who Wrote It

In 1969, an author from Stockton, California published one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. He rarely talked publicly about it or why he never published another book. One poet spent the weekend strolling with the author through the old hotels and boxing rings of this inland port city, talking books, his inspiration and future possibilities.

Published: May 30, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,107 words)

Finding My Florida

A region-by-region travelogue of Jason Diamond’s road trip through the Sunshine State. Driving through Florida from top to bottom helps Diamond better understand a state with a variety of image problems—a state everyone else in his family eventually migrated to—and the ways in which he might and might not have fit in if he’d ever chosen to stay.

Published: May 23, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,123 words)

‘The Internet Is Broken’: @ev Is Trying to Salvage It

As Twitter, Facebook, and Google try to deal with their unexpected toxicity, the internet continues to reward extremism at the expense of quality, depth, and thoughtfulness. In The New York Times, David Streitfeld reflects on what social media has wrought on society by profiling Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’ attempts to course-correct with Medium.

Published: May 20, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,574 words)

The Doctor Will See Your Iguana Now

Andy Newman covers a day in the life of Dr. Anthony Pilny, veterinarian at the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine in Manhattan, New York. Dr. Pilny’s days routinely involve bowel-obstructed bunnies, lame ducks, and feisty, festering iguanas, just to name a few of his pint-sized patients.

Published: May 12, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,465 words)

How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality

Matthew Desmond, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Evicted, tells a dramatic tale of economics and survival through the mortgage-interest deduction, the benefit which encourages homeownership through tax deduction. Few people would consider this an entitlement—or the middle and upper class families that benefit from it as being “on the dole”—but that is precisely what it is. And those who benefit the least are the lower class who can’t afford homes and the middle class with modest mortgages.

Published: May 9, 2017
Length: 28 minutes (7,000 words)

In Spain, Secrets and a Possible Betrayal

When the New York Times asked authors to share stories of when love intersected with travel, Alexander Chee recalls a summer in Granada, Spain, with M. — his boyfriend at the time — who betrayed Chee at a local hammam. “He thought I wanted monogamy more than him, and I didn’t. And I couldn’t forgive that I didn’t get to choose.”

Published: Apr 19, 2017
Length: 7 minutes (1,803 words)

Will London Fall?

In an increasingly insular Britain, the world’s most cosmopolitan capital is bracing for an uncertain future.

Published: Apr 11, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,838 words)

Last of New York’s Master Wigmakers

At a time when wigs are increasingly popular, the New York artisans who make them by hand are a vanishing breed.

Published: Apr 7, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,653 words)

Handmaids Rising

Margaret Atwood on what ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,” written in 1984, means in the age of Trump.

Published: Mar 10, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,560 words)