TheNewsGal, Edition No. 71
What a couple of weeks! Here's what you missed.
All the things
Annie’s Mac & Cheese is based in the Bay Area, but Annie is not. Here’s her story. She’s real! (Alex Schultz, SFGate, ~7 min.)
The Lives of Others: Two women gave birth on the same day in a place called Come By Chance. They didn’t know each other, and never would. Half a century later, their children made a shocking discovery. A truly twisty switched-at-birth story. (Lindsay Jones, The Atavist, ~44 min.)
The Case Against Shakespeare: The Bard has had 400 years in the limelight. It’s time our academic obsession came to an end. Fine with this. (Allan Stratton, The Walrus, ~6 min.)
I called off my wedding. The internet will never forget. Our digital world is the worst. (Lauren Goode, Wired, ~25 min.)
The Father, the Son, and the Racist Spirit: Kelvin Pierce was brought up by one of America’s most prominent white nationalists. With hate surging across the U.S., he’s ready to tell his story. Just … wow. (Seyward Darby, The Guardian, ~17 min.)
How did Frasier afford his apartment? A crucial investigation. (Gabriella Paiella, GQ, ~6 min.)
The Other Nuremberg Trials, Seventy-Five Years On: Failures in prosecuting the businessmen who profited from the Nazi war machine show just how far postwar Europe and America were willing to go in the Cold War quest to protect capitalism. How have I never known about this? (Erica X. Eisen, Boston Review, ~14 min.)
I’ve not spoken with my daughter in 12 years. I hope she’s doing okay during the pandemic. This isn’t what you think it is, trust me. (Clint Watts, Selected Wisdom, ~10 min.)
Who listens to Now That’s What I Call Music! in 2021? Seriously. (Emily Blake, Rolling Stone, ~4 min.)
What the past three months have been like for QAnon believers. I read this with utter fascination. (Scaachi Koul, BuzzFeed News, ~23 min.)
This man is looking for the friends who shipped him overseas in a crate in 1965. LOL. (CBC Radio, ~4 min.)
The Show That Changed Television Forever: All in the Family was the first program to genuinely reckon with the cultural upheaval of 1960s America. TV would never be the same. I’m a sucker for a good backstory. (Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic, ~20 min.)
Brandi Carlile’s Story Is Too Big To Fit In A Song: The folk-rock star’s memoir Broken Horses offers the most intimate look into her fraught life yet. Huge fan. (Hilary Hughes, Vulture, ~13 min.)
A Mother, A Son, and A Wartime Secret: In the wartime Balkans, an encounter with a soldier produced an unwanted baby, a test of international justice, and a decades-long secret. What a beautiful, heartbreaking read. (Stacy Sullivan, Elle, ~34 min.)
How Sound of Metal star Paul Raci went from day jobs to Oscar nominee. What a great story — and the movie is terrific! (Kyle Buchanan, New York Times, ~8 min.)
The quiet horrors of Cally Gingrich. Wait … what’s happening here?! (Ashley Feinberg, Trashberg, ~5 min.)
The Therapy-App Fantasy: An overwhelming demand for counseling has spawned slickly marketed companies promising a service they cannot possibly provide. Truly a hot mess. (Molly Fischer, The Cut, ~29 min.)
Death of a (Really Good) Salesman: He was a powerful executive at some of the best-known companies in the world. Then he started robbing banks. Somehow, I didn’t see the end of this story coming. (Jeff Gottlieb, Truly Adventurous, ~28 min.)
The particular torment of dying, now, from Covid-19. Oof. (Andrew Joseph, STAT, ~7 min.)
One-Horse Town: What’s a year of social distancing when you’re Elsie Eiler, the longtime sole resident (and best burger chef) in America’s smallest small town? I heart her. (Kieran Dahl, Eater, ~10 min.)
If you read one thing this week
Dude, Where’s My Couch? When more than 200 buyers of luxe sofas from ABC Carpet got a group e-mail about a delivery delay, the result was anger, frustration, commiseration, bad jokes, and matchmaking. This made my pandemic. (Hannah Goldfield, New Yorker, ~4 min.)