In D Magazine, Julie Lyons profiles Marion and Larry Pollard, a couple in their 60s living in West Arlington, Texas who happen to be exorcists. During one of her visits with the Pollards, Lyons witnesses the Pollards rid a 38-year-old suburban mom of various demons: Dozens of what appear to be demons manifest and depart […]
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The Problem with Journalism and the Internet, in One Quote
Jonah Peretti: I think there’s an interesting tension between what’s good for the user and what’s good for the industry. That was really created by Google. Say The New Yorker writes a really long 12,000 word piece on Scientology. That takes lots of reporting and lots of investment. That’s important work that our industry should […]
Cincinnati Through the Eyes of 14-Year-Olds
What is it like to be 14 years old and living in three of Cincinnati’s roughest neighborhoods? Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Krista Ramsey and photographer Cara Owsley talked to 14 teens to get their perspectives. Here is Jalen Owensby, who has routinely experienced violence in her family: “My uncle came and picked up my cousin and […]
The Pun-derful World of Competitive Punning
In L.A. Weekly, Zachary Pincus-Roth profiles 38-year-old Ben Ziek, a world pun champion titleholder.
When We Left the Kids in the Car
In Salon, Kim Brooks writes about a time when she left her four-year-old son in her car for five minutes while she ran an errand, and ended up in legal trouble after a bystander recorded the incident and contacted the police.
The Tech Boom, Then and Now
In Guernica, Nathan Deuel visits the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and daughter and writes about how the recent tech boom has changed the city. Here, Deuel recalls being in college during the first dot-com boom when working for a website felt like a novel idea, and before, as he later writes in […]
When Groucho Marx Quoted ‘The Waste Land’ to T.S. Eliot
Strange but true: Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot were pen-pals. Their correspondence began in 1961, when T.S. Eliot sent Groucho Marx a fan letter. It continued for several years, with them finally meeting for dinner in 1964. From a recent post on Daybook: The much-postponed event took place just seven months before Eliot’s death at […]
The $100 Billion Antioxidant Market, and Why You're Having Fish for Dinner
Health food trends continue to grow because they are a cash cow. It’s estimated that the global antioxidant market will generate nearly $100 billion in a few years, even though most of us have no idea what an antioxidant is, and their long-term benefits are far from certain. But that doesn’t stop the California Walnut […]
What Lawyers Have In Common With Auto Mechanics and Dentists
Because of its complexity, Hadfield points out, legal help is what economists call a “credence good”—a good “provided by an expert who also determines a buyer’s needs” because the buyer is “unable to assess how much of the good or service they need; nor can they assess whether or not the service was performed or […]
'When You Make Art Out of Something, They Get Another Chance'
She was still living in the rectory when “Rape Joke” was published in The Awl. There is a section of the poem about the speaker’s parents’ response to the rape: It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told […]
