Writing for The New Yorker, Ian Parker documents one of the best examples I have seen of the ravenous of the charming sociopath, all the earmarks ablaze - fake illnesses, unstoppable lying, childhood abuse, the knives that come out if you cross him/her. Right in my wheelhouse and a must-read. Read the story here.

In #MeNeither Show, episode 5, Shame: Take It or Leave It, Leah McSweeney and I discuss some of the people caught/not caught in shame’s dragnet this week: Jeff Bezos, the leadership of Southern Baptist Convention, and Jill Abramson.

New from me at Reason: A Portland City Council meeting on February 8 passed a resolution aimed at banning hate groups. How these groups are to be identified was not on the agenda…

In #MeNeither, episode 4, OUTRAGEOUS, Leah McSweeney and I discuss outrage culture, its deleterious effect on journalism (et al), why cultural patronization is a garbage thing to do, and why my husband's business Ristretto Roasters is under attack for what Leah and I say here. Tune in!  

On the Reason podcast: Journalists Nancy Rommelmann and Leah McSweeney make no apologies for critiquing what they've called the "toxic femininity" of Asia Argento and the anti-Semitism of some of the leaders of this weekend's Women's March in Washington, D.C. Tune in here.

In episode 3 of #MeNeither, Leah McSweeney and I discuss the monsters who prey on us and the ones we build for prey. Check it out here

#MeNeither, a weekly or so discussion on YouTube between Leah McSweeney and me…

Title does not have anything to do with a store we passed yesterday in the Washington somethingorother mall called LOVESAC…

It’s not every day (or ANY OTHER DAY) a girl’s book gets a Best of 2018. Thank you Reason xx

This podcast was so much fun, I wondered whether the final cut would include anything besides hosts Eric Beetner, S.W. Lauden and I laughing…

… This is where I will be reading Saturday at 12:45, @PDXArtMuseum, as part of #PDXBookFest. They placed me next to the painting at left (“Mother and Child”). We saw yesterday, during a little recon, what was on the right…

The Elizabeth Warren Native American imbroglio, new from me at Reason…

I loved doing the Stacks podcast (twice!) more than I can say. This week, Traci and I talk about John Carreyrou’s triumphant “Bad Blood,” my favorite nonfiction book of the year. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts.

Need (and will!) get a better about posting. Here is a Reason piece from late August, about Argento, Laura Albert, Rose McGowan, Tony Bourdain, and the #MeToo climate du jour, which my editor smartly sub-heded, "A tale of fame, fallacy, and the perils of good intentions."

Few things I enjoy more than spending time with the brilliant/badass people from Reason, and super-stoked to have had the chance to podcast with Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, about “To the Bridge," the state of journalism, and why “the tit pic is not the problem.”

Listen to the whole thing here

Thank you, Bustle, and for the good company

"Friends of Amanda, including college classmate Tiffany Gray, were forced in the aftermath to reconcile the vivacious young mother they had known with the woman who committed an act so monstrous as to be nearly inconceivable…”

"An emotionally honest, meticulous examination of a confluence of circumstances that culminated in a deadly act, and the complicity of our own city and culture in its aftermath."

I am privileged to be in-conversation on May 17 with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body, a Murder and a Memoir. We will be at Powell's Books on Hawthorne at 7:30pm, details here.