Baking Through a Plague

“On one of her monthly brownie runs, my mom caught her first glimpse of the monster coming our way.”

Author: Alia Volz
Published: Jun 12, 2020
Length: 9 minutes (2,333 words)

Crosses, Flags, Arches

Goodbye Ronald, you disturbing simulacrum; you’re not authentic enough for 21st century marketing. “In this new age of the ad, McDonald’s could no longer tolerate a spokesperson that in any way existed apart from them, and this was the beginning of the end for him.”

Source: Meanjin
Published: Jun 14, 2020
Length: 18 minutes (4,565 words)

My Black Ancestors Fled America For Freedom. I Left Canada to Find a Home. Now Both Countries Must Fight For a Better World

“You know, Debra, your daughter was the first Thompson born in America since Cornelius Thompson escaped slavery. It’s been over 150 years, and some days I think we came back too soon.”

Published: Jun 5, 2020
Length: 20 minutes (5,000 words)

Bone, Blood & Bigots: On The Liberation of L.B. Jones

“A 1965 novel about racial injustice and police brutality in the Deep South was hailed by critics and made into a major movie. The story would haunt its author until the bitter end.”

Source: CrimeReads
Published: Jun 11, 2020
Length: 12 minutes (3,219 words)

Pandemic Time

“The distorted experience of time through the COVID-19 pandemic reveals it to be an atemporal liminal passage between two great historic eras.”

Source: Noema
Published: Jun 8, 2020
Length: 21 minutes (5,337 words)

A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Illness Is Brewing in the Northeast

“EEE kills almost half of its victims, and cases are on the rise.”

Source: OneZero
Published: Jun 10, 2020
Length: 18 minutes (4,700 words)

Rewriting Country Music’s Racist History

“First, you exclude black people from the festivals. Then write them out by not recording them. And pretty soon, ‘you have this manufactured image of country music being white and being poor. But when a narrative is that clean,’ Giddens warns, ‘somebody wrote it.'”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Jun 5, 2020
Length: 11 minutes (2,935 words)

The Strong, Silent Type

“What are tears for?”

Source: Popula
Published: Jun 10, 2020
Length: 9 minutes (2,288 words)

From Soldier to Worker

“Police unions were born of resistance to discipline for brutality. Do they belong in the labor movement?”

Source: Chicago Reader
Published: Jun 10, 2020
Length: 15 minutes (3,968 words)

City of Solitude

“For 76 days, 9 million people in Wuhan slept, ate, and waited inside the largest quarantine in human history. Four people reveal what they saw and what happened after the lockdown ended.”

Author: Shawn Yuan
Published: Jun 9, 2020
Length: 15 minutes (3,909 words)