On the day that @opb.org CEO Rachel Smolkin posted this video, saying OPB’s funding gap of $5 million was closed, I was also told by the Chief Content Officer that Hush was canceled. Eighty percent of my income, and my health insurance - gone. I was given no reason for the cancellation. 1/x

It's becoming chillingly clear: an administration that gleefully dismantled USAID and consigned countless people to slow death by starvation and preventable disease will not hesitate to inflict hunger on tens of millions of Americans by cutting off SNAP funds.

This is going to be fun! Read my interview with Leah here and get yourselves to her book talks substack.com/home/post/p-...

Hey Montana friends, this is next week! Bozeman - Mon 10/6 at the Country Bookshelf w/ @betsygainesquammen.bsky.social Helena - Tues 10/7 at Montana Book Co. w/ @kemc.bsky.social Missoula - Wed 10/8 at Fact & Fiction w/ Lee & Jule Banville Hamilton - Thurs 10/9 at Chapter One w/ Russ Lawrence

We live in a time of even greater wealth inequality than preceding the French Revolution

Kathleen McLaughlin’s book about the plasma industry is an extremely eye-opening look at poverty in the US, and how people who sell plasma to help make ends meet are exploited without being given proper protection and support. This is a labor issue conveniently shrowded in stigma.

I strongly recommend this book, I learned so much from it - I hadn't even known the economics of blood was a thing! IMHO it's also a really good example of a former foreign correspondent using that experience/lens to reveal/learn something new about their home country in a very thoughtful way

Given that the vast majority of Americans who sell blood primarily do so first and foremost for money, yes it does reflect the economic hardships of the United States. Really do wish more people would read my book!

Did you know payday loans wither when plasma centers open? Check put my new radio documentary for BBC World Service here www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

I wrote a whole book about this, and the experience of reporting it was an education in how deeply unequal American life has become. www.simonandschuster.com/books/Blood-...

"The writers have been talking to each other in their essays, without even knowing it. They are deeply connected, in their words, through this place. It’s thrilling to watch unfold and an unexpected honor to experience," @kemc.bsky.social re: a book I'm psyched for! open.substack.com/pub/kemc/p/m...

Did you know payday loans wither when plasma centers open? Check put my new radio documentary for BBC World Service here www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

The proven methods to reduce the chances of becoming the Main Character of the Day on social media platforms is by 1) posting less and 2) multiple trusted group chats.

I have a new radio documentary out this week on the BBC World Service, you can hear it here www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

men who claimed to be leaders, to be defenders of liberty, to be dynamos of business, cowering at the thought that they might have to stand up for something, while ordinary people with a fraction of their money and power speak out.

"Today there isn’t a single state, metropolitan area, or county in the United States where a full-time worker earning the local minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom apartment."

Here’s our old friend, Americans’ complete lack of familiarity with real-world authoritarianism, showing up again. They don’t understand that this is exactly what happens in authoritarian countries, outside of totalitarianism. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/o...

In 1971, shortly after the EPA was founded, the agency commissioned dozens of photographers to document environmental issues and scenes across the U.S. The "DOCUMERICA" project captured pollution, urban decay, conservation efforts, and everyday American culture.

Self-censorship is the most effective form of censorship in an authoritarian state, the censorship we impose on ourselves out of fear or fealty to power.

One thing I learned in many years reporting in China is how eventually, the power apparatus comes for everyone, even those who think they'll remain safe by keeping quiet or sucking up to power. That's just how it works.

philadelphia inquirer is right there for you to subscribe to instead, people

Your Chinese idiom of the day/century to date is 上樑不正下樑歪 "when the roof beam is out of line, the rafters are crooked," precisely translatable as "a fish rots from the head down."

One thing I learned in many years reporting in China is how eventually, the power apparatus comes for everyone, even those who think they'll remain safe by keeping quiet or sucking up to power. That's just how it works.

It was a neat trick to get rid of the older, more knowledgeable and skeptical journalists first - and ageism just let it slide on by.

Just a reminder that Musk couldn’t get a top level security clearance. And he was under investigation for violating the terms of the clearance he did have. Now he has your Social Security number, your tax returns, and is unilaterally deciding who the government does and does not pay.

Brendan’s my colleague at Dartmouth and I consider him one of the most level-headed political observers. More level-headed than me. And this is what he’s seeing.

read more books.

Hey friends, I'm writing a Mountain West column for @thestranger.com.web.brid.gy, Seattle's best newspaper. First up, abortion rights and the right to privacy www.thestranger.com/mountain-dis...

Hey if you want to understand how inequality is baked into US healthcare and an entire American underclass keeps global companies in profits, my book is right here bookshop.org/p/books/bloo...

This whole debacle, and how it went on for so long, is also a stark illustration of the terrible things that happen unchecked when a local newspaper shrivels up and dies.

Is there any good academic work or deep writing on the devaluation of journalism as a profession and/or dehumanization of journalists since the emergence of trumpism? Link me pls.

Hey if you want to understand how inequality is baked into US healthcare and an entire American underclass keeps global companies in profits, my book is right here bookshop.org/p/books/bloo...

The media business these days turning into "can you find the non-crazy billionaire to fund you" seems less than ideal?

Beware people who claim to explain all of "rural America" but have only limited or no lived experience of it.

Going through an old storage unit, and it will surprise nobody that clothes were much better quality 30 years ago. Like the quality of very basic, inexpensive made-in-the-USA jeans from the 1990s is kind of astounding.

This is the declaration that said younger Americans should go back to work and get sick to speed up "herd immunity" because they argued covid wasn't so bad. The pandemic ended up killing 1.2 million people in the U.S.; deadliest disaster in American history

Lesser noted: Montana (which elected the first woman to congress) also just elected a majority-women state Supreme Court for the first time.

Politicsbros are arguing over how the Dems should move further to the right again but nearly everyone I know just wants decent, functional health care and to generally be left alone.

Accidentally saw about 90 seconds of cable news and just imagine anyone believing that “journalism” is the same five panelists shouting at each other about Trump’s latest social media posts.

It's a revealing window into class and regionalism how extremism in the American West has been written off for decades as a local problem, just a place where the wackos collect. Really it's been a training ground and fertile soil for these ideologies to grow, expand and take over.

I have zero interest in writing about anything about national politics right now (literally it's drowning us) but I am itching to write about my strange, rural-ish mostly white working-class hometown that has never once voted for Trump or the current era of Republicans. Curious place.

Like, I can just hop on and say journalism is dying and untrusted in the US because the media industry made a desperate sharp turn years ago toward valuing ego and social media micro-fame more than the actual work of reporting?

a starter pack of journalists I feel professionally threatened by

So you really can post random things on here and a flood of pedantic assholes won't jump in and explain why you're wrong? Amazing.