On Matthew’s Mind

An operation to remove a brain cyst changed Matthew’s identity.

Source: Aeon
Published: Jul 17, 2020
Length: 15 minutes (3,900 words)

Inside Citizen, the App That Asks You to Report on the Crime Next Door

The Citizen app gives everyone with a smartphone the ability to report on crimes and crises as they happen. How do you do that without opening the door to privacy invasions and profiling? That’s a lot less clear.

Source: Wired
Published: Jul 20, 2020
Length: 22 minutes (5,743 words)

The Way of the Goldfinch

“Watching a goldfinch sway on a blade of grass, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder writes to her soon-to-be-born daughter about beauty, balance, and lessons of uncertainty.”

Published: Jul 13, 2020
Length: 6 minutes (1,525 words)

50 Days Of Protest In Portland. A Violent Police Response. This Is How We Got Here.

“Protesters and journalists who regularly showed up at the nightly demonstrations agreed a siege was happening — but over 14 days, federal law enforcement increasingly became the occupying force.”

Published: Jul 19, 2020
Length: 13 minutes (3,359 words)

John Lewis: Rooted Deep in Alabama Soil

“To see who Lewis is, you must start on the family farm near Troy, Alabama, where he spent his childhood preaching to the chickens he cared for, talking his way out of picking cotton, and dreaming of a life beyond overheated Alabama fields and Jim Crow laws.”

Published: Jul 18, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,960 words)

Screen Share: A College Teacher’s Zoom Journal

For 15 years, Anne Fadiman taught her students in intimate classrooms. Covid-19  has meant reinventing the way she teaches.

Source: Wired
Published: Jun 17, 2020
Length: 28 minutes (7,087 words)

How Do Women Become White Supremacists?

“Anyone who joins the hate movement is a seeker to some degree, and maybe there are circumstances that make them particularly primed to be recruited. They’re seeking something in that moment — maybe it’s power, maybe it’s meaning, maybe it’s money because they see a potential profit in running a subscription-based platform.”

Author: EJ Dickson
Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Jul 16, 2020
Length: 13 minutes (3,256 words)

Tune In, Drop Out

In South Korea, the cultural and familial pressure to conform is massive, and for many, crushing. Meet the individualist loners, the honjok, who are carving out a new way — and changing the Korean economy.

Author: Ann Babe
Source: Rest of World
Published: Jul 14, 2020
Length: 13 minutes (3,350 words)

This Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping the World’s Longest Cave

“Patricia Crowther’s ex-husband coded her cave maps into one of the first hit adventure games in the 1970s, and she had no idea.”

Source: OneZero
Published: Jul 15, 2020
Length: 17 minutes (4,278 words)

Letters of Love: ‘Our Father Wrote Every Day As He Waited To Be Sent To Auschwitz’

“His love for his sons leaps out from all his letters, but in one of the last he had a surprise for them.”

Source: BBC
Published: Jul 12, 2020
Length: 10 minutes (2,676 words)