7 stories to read this weekend

We had a glitch last week that didn’t allow the email to be sent out. It seems to have been fixed and regular service is resuming. Hope you enjoy your weekend.

• What happens when you give TV’s biggest fanboy his own TV show. Yup, you guessed it, this is a profile of Brian Stelter.
• Drugs, Death and Neglect: Mother Jones magazine goes behind the scene at Animal Planet.
• The shadow banking system is an unstable funding system for banks, not assets. If you can handle somewhat wonky and technical writing, this is a nice paper on stuff we tech people don’t accord much attention.
• Surveillance and Scandal: NSA surveillance isn’t just about security, it is about blackmail, writers Alfred McCoy.
• The six things that make stories go viral: The weird science of the social clicking, viewing and sharing.
• Darkness in August: Baseball nightmare, murder and some place in Oklahoma. A Vanity Fair feature, worth reading.
• Strange story of A-Rod and writer Richard Ben Cramer: continuing with my baseball theme, here is another must read story.