TheNewsGal, Edition No. 62
What a week! Here's what you missed.
All the things
“I was lucky to find this vaccine anywhere”: Stanley Plotkin, legendary vaccinologist, on the historic development and chaotic distribution of covid-19 vaccines. Don’t they know who he is?! (Eli Saslow, Washington Post, ~6 min.)
Remembering Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger disaster: Joyce Maynard on the day she spent with the teacher-turned-astronaut. Gave me chills. (Joyce Maynard, LitHub, ~11 min.)
A climate scientist spent years trying to get people to pay attention to the disaster ahead. His wife is exhausted. His older son thinks there’s no future. And nobody but him will use the outdoor toilet he built to shrink his carbon footprint. Good god. (Elizabeth Weil, ProPublica, ~20 min.)
The true story of Jess Krug, the white professor who posed as Black for years — until it all blew up last fall. I just can’t. (Marisa Kashino, Washingtonian, ~22 min.)
Confessions of a Venmo voyeur: The secret satisfaction of watching you spend. Oh, this is so good. (Sara Benincasa, Curious, ~17 min.)
Toward a patient gamer: What kinds of video games do I want to give my kids? Love this. (David Cooper Moore, Medium, ~9 min.)
How to be a genius: I traveled the world and trawled the archive to unearth the hidden lessons from history’s most brilliant people. Fascinating stuff, from the professor who teaches Yale’s “genius course.” (Craig Wright, Aeon, ~15 min.)
Jim Haynes: A man who invited the world over for dinner. What a life. (Vicky Baker, BBC, ~8 min.)
The case that made Texas the death penalty capital. Excellent storytelling. (Maurice Chammah, Marshall Project, ~22 min.)
I’m a first-generation Indian American woman. I married into a family of Trump supporters. It took a lot of courage for her to share this. (Shrestha Singh, HuffPost, ~12 min.)
Who’s making all those scam calls? In which the reporter actually tracks down and confronts one of the scammers. Wow. (Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, NYT Magazine, ~25 min.)
The Capitol was breached by Trump supporters who had been declaring, at rally after rally, that they would go to violent lengths to keep the president in power. A chronicle of an attack foretold. JEEZUZ. (Luke Mogelson, New Yorker, ~56 min.)
How I helped my dad die. Oh, my heart. (Esmé E. Deprez, Bloomberg, ~25 min.)
An up-and-coming historian published a paper proving Alexander Hamilton owned slaves. Pulitzer Prize-winning Hamilton author Ron Chernow couldn’t handle the truth. Pitiful. (Alexis Coe, Study Marry Kill, ~8 min.)
Knuckles. Here’s the opening line: “The swastikas on his knuckles kept stealing my attention.” (Kathryn E. Hitchcock, Journal of Clinical Oncology, ~8 min.)
The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class. I thought this was going to be terrible, but it’s terrific. (Alex Danco, AlexDanco.com, ~12 min.)
The ignominious deceits of Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who has misled the public about his education, his business history, and training for the Paralympics. What an entitled little shit. (Sara Luterman, The Nation, ~7 min.)
Pellet ice is the good ice. Fact. (Helen Rosner, New Yorker, ~5 min.)
If you read one thing this week
I own the table of my dreams because someone was desperate. (Meg Conley, Stay at Home Meg, ~6 min.)
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Thanks for reading.
Kirsten