Erin Corey

In January 2019, culture writer Anne Helen Petersen set the internet on fire with her viral BuzzFeed essay diagnosing “millennial burnout” - a chronic state of stress and exhaustion that’s become a “base temperature” for young people today. Now, she continues this generation-defining conversation in a brand-new format, interviewing millennials around the country about their own deeply personal experiences with burnout, and the culture that creates it.

Stirringly evocative, thought provoking, and often jaw dropping, The Operator ranges across SEAL Team Operator Robert O'Neill's awe-inspiring 400-mission career that included his involvement in attempts to rescue "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell and abducted-by-Somali-pirates Captain Richard Phillips and culminated in those famous three shots that dispatched the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

"Little Surrenders" is a dark, mesmerizing short story about a marriage that’s reached its breaking point, and just how far a woman will go to reinvent herself after one too many compromises.

Kyle Fasano has it all: a loving wife, two children, and a house on the hill. Still, for one night it's not enough. Risking everything, he has a fling with a woman from the office. He knows better, but she offers a simple temptation. Napoleon Villa has very little: no real family, no real home. A veteran detective for the LAPD, he is a gray wolf in an ever-darkening world. When the call comes in that a young woman has plummeted to her death at the Los Angeles Hilton, it seems like just another case.

Former CIA case officer Charles Jenkins is a man at a crossroads: in his early sixties, he has a family, a new baby on the way, and a security consulting business on the brink of bankruptcy. Then his former bureau chief shows up at his house with a risky new assignment: travel undercover to Moscow and locate a Russian agent believed to be killing members of a clandestine US spy cell known as the seven sisters. Desperate for money, Jenkins agrees to the mission and heads to the Russian capital.

When Nissa Lang’s house sitting job falls through, she’s left with no place to stay for the summer. While she’s figuring out what to do, her old family friend Desmond Stilling hears about her dilemma and invites her to stay on his palatial estate. Trouble is, Nissa’s always had a crush on Desmond, so she’ll have to keep her feelings under wraps....